Despite spending far more on medical care, Americans live shorter lives than the citizens of other high-income countries. The situation has been getting worse for at least three decades. This paper describes the main scientific methods for guiding the allocation of resources to health –...

This article reports the recommendations of the Panel on Cost Effectiveness in Health and Medicine, sponsored by the US Public Health Service, on standardised methods for conducting cost-effectiveness analyses. Although not expressly directed at analyses of pharmaceutical agents, the Panel’s...

Previous studies of Medicare’s prospective payment system for hospitals (PPS), introduced in 1983, evaluated only its first few years, using data collected during the hospital stay to control for patients’ health. We examine transitions among health care settings over a full decade following...

Medicare’s prospective payment system (PPS), introduced in 1983, pays hospitals a fixed price for each stay rather than reimbursing costs. Previous studies evaluated its first few years using endogenous measures to control for heterogeneity in patients’ health. We examine PPS over a full...