Introduction Innovations in medical care have led to improvements in quality and quantity of life. Researchers estimated that improvements in medical care contributed to the life expectancy for newborns increasing by almost seven years from 1960 to 2000. However, U.S. health spending reached an estimated 2.7 trillion dollars in 2010 and the health share of the gross domestic product is projecte...

Assessing the Effectiveness of Health Care Cost Containment Measures Using SOEP panel data and difference-in-differences methods, this study is the first to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of four different health care cost containment measures within an integrated framework. The four measures investigated were introduced in Germany in 1997 to reduce moral hazard and public health expend...

Safety valves, discretionary advisory boards, and other cost containment mechanisms enhance the political feasibility of stringent climate policy by limiting firms’ and households’ exposures to higher than anticipated costs associated with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, cost containment comes at a price; it increases the risk of climate-related damages and it also discourages inves...

In this paper, we focus on those policy instruments with monetary incentives that are used to contain public health expenditure in high-income countries. First, a schematic view of the main cost-containment methods and the variables in the health system they intend to influence is presented. Two types of instruments to control the level and growth of public health expenditure are considered: (i...

Utilization review (UR) has become a prominent approach to cost containment now used by almost 65% of private group insurance plans. Although insurers have increasingly relied on UR to contain health care costs, until recently little was known about the effects of this cost containment approach. This article reviews some of the key findings of a UR evaluation, based on analysis of claims data o...

OBJECTIVES To describe a unique specialized seating delivery model for children with disabilities that focuses on cost containment and environmental preservation. To determine whether this delivery model achieves cost containment. DESIGN A retrospective cost analysis using data from billing records and annual statistical reports of the specialized seating program, for the 2004 to 2009 billing...

The issue of the cost containment effects of payment systems on per diem payments by Medicaid to nursing homes is addressed. Estimates of real payment rates as a function of broadly defined payment system classifications and economic and demographic variables using State-level data are presented. Little support for the notion that prospective payment systems substantially restrain payment rates...

In the United States, when the cost-containment paradigm shifted from regulation to competition, all-payer hospital ratesetting went out of favor. After reviewing the published literature and supplementing the existing literature with more current information, the author concludes that all-payer ratesetting is able to meet its multiple objectives of cost containment, reduction of the amount of ...

Long-term care cost-containment policies have focused on reducing the numbers of persons entering nursing homes. To provide insight and background for such efforts, the authors studied the experience of Medicaid nursing home entry cohorts in three individual States. They found substantial interstate variation in rates of nursing home entry and subsequent patterns of discharge, suggesting the op...