The Association Between Hospital Concentration And Insurance Premiums In ACA Marketplaces.

Keeping the Affordable Care Act's health insurance Marketplaces financially accessible is critically important to their viability. While the relationship between the number of insurers and Marketplace premiums has received widespread attention, the role of hospital market concentration on premiums has been understudied. We examined the relationship between hospital market concentration and Marketplace insurance premiums in the period 2014-17, the extent to which the number of insurers modified this relationship, and whether community-level characteristics were associated with varying levels of concentration.

The Net Present Value and Other Economic Implications of a Medical Career.

College graduates' career choices are driven by a complex mixture of factors, one of which is economics. The author comments on the report by Marcu and colleagues in this issue, which focuses strictly on the economics of this decision. Specifically, Marcu and colleagues modeled career choices as long-term financial investments in human capital, which consists of the knowledge and clinical skills physicians gain in undergraduate and graduate medical education.

The many different prices paid to providers and the flawed theory of cost shifting: is it time for a more rational all-payer system?

In developed nations that rely on multiple, competing health insurers-for example, Switzerland and Germany-the prices for health care services and products are subject to uniform price schedules that are either set by government or negotiated on a regional basis between associations of health insurers and associations of providers of health care. In the United States, some states-notably Maryland-have used such all-payer systems for hospitals only. Elsewhere in the United States, prices are negotiated between individual payers and providers.

Humbled in Taiwan.

Taiwan’s highly efficient system of national health insurance should humble and inspire the United States

US health care stands Adam Smith on his head.

Health professionals' benevolence has enabled politicians to resist moving the United States to a fully universal system of health insurance

The US muddle over a child's right to health care.

Up to eight million children of poor American families are without health insurance—so why is there a dispute over children's right to health care?

Health spending in OECD countries in 2004: an update.

In 2004, U.S. health care spending per capita was 2.

Getting America to take the shame.

Film maker Michael Moore is to be thanked for holding up mirrors to the US healthcare system

Faith based health policy: the urge to privatise.

Who owns health systems matters less than that the various enterprises operate on a level playing field

Why single-payer health systems spark endless debate.

Are they a panacea or a form of “socialised medicine”? Americans just cannot agree

The trouble with US military medicine.

Squalour at the Walter Reed Army Hospital shows how out of touch America's elites really are

Is the president's plan dead even before arrival?

Bush's proposed health reforms would do little for the millions of low income, uninsured Americans

Uninsured Americans and the new Democratic Congress.

Is universal coverage now more likely?

Health care spending and use of information technology in OECD countries.

In 2003, the United States had fewer practicing physicians, practicing nurses, and acute care bed days per capita than the median country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Nevertheless, U.S.

The pricing of U.S. hospital services: chaos behind a veil of secrecy.

Although Americans and foreigners alike tend to think of the U.S. health care system as being a "market-driven" system, the prices actually paid for health care goods and services in that system have remained remarkably opaque.

Variations in California hospital regions: another wake-up call for sleeping policymakers.

The paper by John Wennberg and colleagues poses a renewed challenge to federal and state policymakers to handle the taxpayers' hard-earned money responsibly--a task both have shunned for many decades. With the federal government's deficit growing apace and California state's budget, properly accounted for, in deep deficit as well, health policymakers can sustain the inefficiencies now apparent in our health care system only by pricing more and more low-income Americans out of health care. One could question the ethics of that approach.

Is there hope for the uninsured?

In an anecdote popular on the conference circuit, an American health policy analyst who has ascended to heaven asks God, "Will there ever be universal health insurance coverage in the United States?" "Perhaps," sighs God, "but not in my lifetime." This paper argues that this tale accurately describes the prospect of covering the uninsured in this country. Neither moral sentiments among a majority of U.