Recently, the Department of Defense replaced its traditional fee-for-service insurance plan for military health care beneficiaries with an HMO/PPO hybrid. Using survey and claims data, we compare changes in costs over two years at sites that implemented this initiative (CRI) with changes at matched control sites. The results indicate that CRI substantially raised per beneficiary government cost...

With the skyrocketing costs of modern health care, many health policy planners turn to cost effective analysis (CEA) or cost benefit analysis (CBA) to get quantitative answers for appropriateness of health procedures. This article analyzes how well approaches like CEA or CBA handle the hidden ethical judgements for such problems as: alternative treatments for an identical goal, the most effec...

From 1991 to 2009, the fraction of Medicaid recipients enrolled in HMOs and other forms of Medicaid managed care (MMC) increased from 11 percent to 71 percent. This increase was largely driven by state and local mandates that required most Medicaid recipients to enroll in an MMC plan. Theoretically, it is ambiguous whether the shift from fee-for-service into managed care would lead to an increa...

OBJECTIVE A new measurement of health care quality for Medicare beneficiaries has been implemented by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA). This paper describes the program, presents baseline data and highlights associated issues. DESIGN The Health Outcomes Survey (HOS) is a longitudinal cohort mail survey. Changes in population health status after 2 years will be evaluated on an i...

universal health coverage in thailand: achievement and experiences learned doshmangir l1,2 (msc, phd), rashidian a3,4 (md, phd), bazyar m3* (msc, phd condidate) 1 department of health services management, iranian center of exellence in health management, tabriz university of medical sciences, tabriz, iran 2 tabriz health services management research center, tabriz university of medical sciences...