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...

The rise of online sharing systems offers consumers the opportunity to grant other consumers access to infrequent-use goods or spaces they own, or the opportunity to access those they do not. Thereby, consumers’ decision-making and usage behaviors are likely to change, which in turn will affect consumer surplus and thus social welfare. Within this paper, first steps towards understanding the ec...

Value-based insurance design programs have focused on reducing consumer cost sharing in health insurance for preventive tests and medications for chronic diseases. But for value-based design principles to have a stronger clinical and economic impact, they should be extended to expensive services and to those for which the evidence is limited or controversial. This paper proposes applying value-...

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 ...

INTRODUCTION The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the 2006 Massachusetts (MA) health reform law, on which the ACA was based, aimed to improve the affordability of care largely by expanding publicly sponsored insurances. Both laws also aimed to promote consumer understanding of how to acquire, maintain and use these public plans. A prior study found an association between the level of cost-sharing ...