Economic Evidence on Cost Sharing and Alternative Insurance Designs to Address Moral and Behavioral Hazards in High-Income Health Care Systems: A Systematic Review.

In health insurance, "moral hazard" describes the concept that coverage without an out-of-pocket cost to consumers could result in health care utilization beyond economically efficient levels. In response, payers in the United States (US) have designed pharmaceutical benefit plans with significant cost exposure (e.g.

Estimating Productivity Loss from Breast and Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer among Working-Age Patients and Unpaid Caregivers: A Survey Study Using the Multiplier Method.

Unlabelled: Traditional approaches to capturing health-related productivity loss (e.g., the human capital method) focus only on the foregone wages of affected patients, overlooking the losses caregivers can incur.

Simulating the Fiscal Impact of Anti-Obesity Medications as an Obesity Reduction Strategy.

While substantial public health investment in anti-smoking initiatives has had demonstrated benefits on health and fiscal outcomes, similar investment in reducing obesity has not been undertaken, despite the substantial burden obesity places on society. Anti-obesity medications (AOMs) are poorly prescribed despite evidence that weight loss is not sustained using other strategies alone.We used a simulation model to estimate the potential impact of 100% uptake of AOMs on Medicare and Medicaid spending, disability payments, and taxes collected relative to status quo with negligible AOM use.

The Societal Value of Broader Access to Antiobesity Medications.

Objective: Obesity and its complications place an enormous burden on society. Yet antiobesity medications (AOM) are prescribed to only 2% of the eligible population, even though few individuals can sustain weight loss using other strategies alone. This study estimated the societal value of greater access to AOM.

Share of Oncology Versus Nononcology Spending in Episodes Defined by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Oncology Care Model.

Purpose: Performance-based payments to oncology providers participating in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Oncology Care Model (OCM) are based, in part, on overall spending in 6-month episodes of care, including spending unrelated to oncology care. The amount of spending likely to occur outside of oncologists' purview is unknown.

Methods: Following the OCM definition of an episode, we used SEER-Medicare data from 2006 to 2013 to identify episodes of cancer care for the following diagnoses: breast cancer (BC), non-small-cell lung cancer, renal cell carcinoma, multiple myeloma (MM), and chronic myeloid leukemia.

An early lunar core dynamo driven by thermochemical mantle convection.

Although the Moon currently has no internally generated magnetic field, palaeomagnetic data, combined with radiometric ages of Apollo samples, provide evidence for such a magnetic field from approximately 3.9 to 3.6 billion years (Gyr) ago, possibly owing to an ancient lunar dynamo.

Mantle-circulation models with sequential data assimilation: inferring present-day mantle structure from plate-motion histories.

Data assimilation is an approach to studying geodynamic models consistent simultaneously with observables and the governing equations of mantle flow. Such an approach is essential in mantle circulation models, where we seek to constrain an unknown initial condition some time in the past, and thus cannot hope to use first-principles convection calculations to infer the flow history of the mantle. One of the most important observables for mantle-flow history comes from models of Mesozoic and Cenozoic plate motion that provide constraints not only on the surface velocity of the mantle but also on the evolution of internal mantle-buoyancy forces due to subducted oceanic slabs.

Predicting response to regulatory change in the small group health insurance market: the case of association health plans and HealthMarts.

Lack of health insurance continues to be a concern for many people, even among those who are employed, and employees of small firms are much less likely to be insured than employees of larger firms. For several years, the U.S.

Providing health insurance to the short-term unemployed.

This paper assesses the likely effects of proposed federal programs to provide temporary subsidies to unemployed people for purchasing health insurance. A simulation model, using the Survey of Income and Program Participation and data from other sources, was used to quantify various effects of a typical proposal. The model illustrates how changing eligibility rules and subsidy formulas would alter the cost and other measures of program performance.

Time scales and heterogeneous structure in geodynamic earth models.

Computer models of mantle convection constrained by the history of Cenozoic and Mesozoic plate motions explain some deep-mantle structural heterogeneity imaged by seismic tomography, especially those related to subduction. They also reveal a 150-million-year time scale for generating thermal heterogeneity in the mantle, comparable to the record of plate motion reconstructions, so that the problem of unknown initial conditions can be overcome. The pattern of lowermost mantle structure at the core-mantle boundary is controlled by subduction history, although seismic tomography reveals intense large-scale hot (low-velocity) upwelling features not explicitly predicted by the models.

The interaction between forms of insurance contract and types of technical change in medical care.

A simple three-parameter description of medical technology is introduced to investigate the relationships between technical change, welfare, and type of insurance contract. The value of a particular change in technology depends on the existing form of contract. The marginal equilibrium expected utility to consumers of different types of technical change hinges on the manner in which the insurance arrangement is designed to mitigate moral hazard.

Specialization among obstetrician/gynecologists. Another dimension of physician supply.

This study uses the Herfindahl index to investigate the specialization patterns of physicians. "Specialization" is defined as the degree to which an individual doctor concentrates his practice into a narrow range of disease categories. This application is the specialization pattern of office-based obstetrician/gynecologists in the United States.

Gas chromatographic/mass spectrometric determination of daminozide in high protein food products.

A gas chromatographic/mass spectrometric (GC/MS) method for determining daminozide in high protein products has been developed. Daminozide is hydrolyzed in the presence of a strong base to form unsymmetrical dimethylhydrazine (UDMH) which is then distilled from the food matrix. A stable derivative is formed by reacting UDMH with salicyladehyde to form salicyaldehyde dimethylhydrazone.