Medical care organizations (MCOs), such as health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations, have become popular in recent decades because of their ability to lower consumers' healthcare costs while increasing providers' throughput. These organizations function as healthcare...

This analysis has two purposes. The first is to establish that physicians owe their patients a fiduciary duty. Courts and commentators have widely acknowledged that this duty exists because of the nature of the special relationship between a physician and a patient. Application of this duty has...

After identifying the economic benefits that increased medical tourism from Canada to the United States may confer on the U.S. healthcare market and local economies, this essay analyzes applicable U.S. legal impediments that certain medical tourism arrangements — to wit, those involving a...

In the late 1990s, the FDA opened the floodgates for pharmaceutical companies to advertise their products directly to patient-consumers. Due to this direct-to-consumer advertising and the advent of the Internet, which together provide ready access to large quantities of generic and sometimes...

This paper examines the impact of universal, free, and easily accessible primary healthcare on population health as measured by age-specific birth and mortality rates, focusing on a nationwide socialized medicine program implemented in Turkey. The Family Medicine Program (FMP), launched in 2005,...

Moral hazard and provider-induced demand may contribute to overutilization of scarce health care resources. The U.S. health care system includes several compensatory cost-containment mechanisms, but their effects depend on how patients and providers respond. We investigate hospice programs'...

We examine how substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers respond to private health insurance expansions induced by state equal coverage ('parity') laws for SUD treatment. We use data on the near universe of specialty SUD treatment providers in the United States between 1997 and 2010 in an...

Universal health coverage (UHC) is an integral part of the United Nations' sustainable development goals. The private sector plays a prominent role in achieving UHC, being the primary source of essential medicines for many people. However, many private healthcare facilities in low- and...

We examine how substance use disorder (SUD) treatment providers respond to private health insurance expansions induced by state equal coverage ('parity') laws for SUD treatment. We use data on the near universe of specialty SUD treatment providers in the United States between 1997 and 2010 in an...

Healthcare systems differ greatly across the world, however, it appears that the extent of public insurance (publicly/government funded healthcare) is the only institutional characteristic that plays a significant role in accounting for the large disparities in total healthcare spending. Other...