At the end of 1998, China launched a government-run mandatory insurance program, the Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI), to replace the previous medical insurance system. Using the UEBMI reform in China as a natural experiment, this study identify variations in patient cost sharing...

Children from low-income families face persistent barriers to accessing high-quality health care services. Previous research studies have examined the importance of expanding children's health insurance coverage, but there is little prior evidence concerning the impacts of directly expanding...

In order to better understand what threatens vulnerable populations' access to primary care, it is important to understand the factors associated with closing safety-net clinics. This paper examines how a clinic's financial position, productivity, and community characteristics are associated...

In both its costs and the number of its enrollees, Medicaid is the largest means-tested transfer program in the United States. It is also a fundamental part of the health care system, providing health insurance to low-income families, indigent seniors, disabled adults and, in some states,...

We present the first direct evidence on the relative quality of public and private healthcare in a low-income setting, using a unique set of audit studies. We sent standardized (fake) patients to rural primary care providers in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, and recorded the quality of care...

Employing a technological solution to monitor the attendance of public-sector health care workers in India resulted in a 15 percent increase in the attendance of the medical staff. Health outcomes improved, with a 16 percent increase in the delivery of infants by a doctor and a 26 percent...

Nurse practitioners (NPs) and physician assistants (PAs) now outnumber family practice doctors in the United States and are the principal providers of primary care to many communities. Recent growth of these professions has occurred amidst considerable cross-state variation in their regulation,...

We propose and empirically implement a test for the presence of racial prejudice among emergency department (ED) physicians based on the bounceback rates of the patients who were discharged after receiving diagnostic tests during their initial ED visits. A bounceback is defined as a return to...

Health systems globally face increasing morbidity and mortality from chronic disease, yet many--especially in low- and middle-income countries--lack strong primary care. We analyze China's efforts to promote primary care management for insured rural Chinese with chronic disease, analyzing unique...

We study spillover effects of the largest ever increase in Medicaid primary care reimbursement rates on behavioral health and healthcare outcomes; mental illness, substance use disorders, and tobacco product use. Much of the variation in Medicaid reimbursement rates we leverage is attributable...