This paper studies the efficiency effects of physician fees when the insurer (possibly the government) pays a fee for each procedure, and the doctor may supplement the fee by an extra charge to the patient, a practice known as 'balance billing.' Monopolistically competitive physicians can discriminate among patients on the basis of both price and quality. Equilibria with and without balance bil...

T HE SURFACE CHARGE OF MAMMALIAN CELLS is considered to be one of several factors determining the balance between attractive and repulsive forces that operate between the cell periphery and other surfaces of potential contact.1’2 The surface-charge density of the leukocyte may be important in determining surface characteristics such as adhesiveness, deformability, and pseudopod formation. Varia...

We study the effects of 'balance billing', i.e., allowing physicians to charge a fee from patients in addition to the fee paid by Medicare. First, we show that on pure efficiency grounds the optimal Medicare fee under balance billing is zero. An active Medicare policy thus can only be justified when distributional concerns are accounted for. Extending the analysis by Glazer and McGuire, we ther...

The charge or barion number balance function in the relative azimuthal angle of a pair of particles emitted in ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions is studied. The ππ and pp̄ balance functions are computed using thermal models with two different set of parameters, corresponding to a large freeze-out temperature and a moderate transverse flow or a small temperature and a large transverse flow. ...