Many goods and services can be readily provided through a series of unconnected transactions, but in health care close coordination over time and within care episodes improves both health outcomes and efficiency. Close coordination is problematic in the US health care system because the...

Many goods and services can be readily provided through a series of unconnected transactions, but in health care close coordination over time and within care episodes improves both health outcomes and efficiency. Close coordination is problematic in the US health care system because the...

We propose a "common-agency" model for explaining inefficient contracting in the U.S. healthcare system. In our setting, common-agency problems arise when multiple payers seek to motivate a shared provider to invest in improved care coordination. Our approach differs from other common-agency...

"Why doesn't healthcare get better and cheaper? The evolution of the cell phones that we carry in our pockets demonstrates that quality can increase while prices fall. Why not in healthcare? Our answer is that the health sector generates the wrong kinds of innovation. It is too easy to profit...

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. Economists seeking to improve the efficiency of health care delivery frequently emphasize two issues: the fragmented structure of...