This paper explores options for reforming Medicare cost sharing in an effort to provide better financial protection for those beneficiaries with the greatest health care needs. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) and the Medicare Current Beneficiary Survey (MCBS), we consider how unified annual deductibles, alternative coinsurance rates, and a limit on out-of-pocket spending w...

D espite the " 3 by 5 " initiative [1], which aims to treat 3 million people with antiretrovirals (ARVs) by the end of 2005, access to ARVs in resource-poor settings remains limited. Moreover, in some ARV-access programmes, free ARVs are provided only, or preferentially, to patients who are ARV naive. Treatment restricted to patients who are ARV naive was initially the case in Uganda, with the ...

This research evaluates the potential gains in benefits from using Goal Programming to preserve forestland. Twoand three-dimensional Goal Programming models are developed and applied to data from applicants to the U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Legacy Program, the largest forest protection program in the United States. Results suggest that not only do these model yield substantial increases in be...

Proponents of health savings accounts (HSAs) contend that they will reduce medical expenditures. In practice, however, the effect of HSAs, and the high-deductible health plans that must accompany them, will depend on the actual provisions of those plans and of the plans they replace. We show that typical plans in the market today already contain substantial cost sharing. We find that many HSA/h...

Medicare Coverage of Anesthesia Services During Screening Colonoscopies for Patients at LowRisk of Sedation-Related Complications In 2014, theCenters forMedicare&Medicaid Serviceswaived patient cost sharing for anesthesia services during screening colonoscopies.1 The current professional guidelines recommend that sedation be provided by the gastroenterologist-nurse team; a separate anesthesiolo...

An auction type mechanism elicits the valuations for getting a good (service) from the agents, allocates some goods (service) to some agents and charge money only to the served agents. We characterize the mechanisms that are immune to three alternative types of collusion of the agents. Under full collusion, agents can coordinate misreports and transfer money between them. We show that only the ...

The objective of cooperative game theory is to study ways to enforce and sustain cooperation among agents willing to cooperate. A central question in this field is how the benefits (or costs) of a joint effort can be divided among participants, taking into account individual and group incentives, as well as various fairness properties. In this chapter, we define basic concepts and review some o...