Incentive and selection effects of Medigap insurance on inpatient care.

The Medicare program, which provides insurance coverage to the elderly in the United States, does not protect them fully against high out-of-pocket costs. For this reason private supplementary insurance, named Medigap, has been available to cover Medicare gaps. This paper studies how Medigap affects the utilization of inpatient care, separating the incentive and selection effects of supplementary insurance.

Fibrosis staging in chronic hepatitis C: analysis of discordance between transient elastography and liver biopsy.

In chronic hepatitis C, transient elastography (TE) accurately identifies cirrhosis, but its ability to assess significant fibrosis (Metavir > or = F2) is variable. Constitutional and liver disease-related factors may influence TE and here we examined the variables associated with differences. Three hundred consecutive hepatitis C virus (HCV)-RNA positive patients had biochemical tests, TE and a biopsy performed on the same day.

Uncertainty and the demand for medical care.

This paper provides an analysis of the effects of uncertainty on the demand for medical care using a simplified version of Grossman's human capital model of the demand for health. Two types of uncertainty are analysed: the uncertainty surrounding the incidence of illness and the uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of medical care. In the first the consumer's basic level of health is assumed to be a random variable; in the second the effectiveness of medical care is assumed to be random.

Uncertainty, inequalities in health and the demand for health.

As it has become increasingly recognized that inequalities in health stem more from inequalities in wealth, rather than from inequalities in access to medical care, economists have begun to suggest that Michael Grossman's model of the demand for health may be a useful analytical framework for investigating the issue. Ironically, the more popular of Grossman's two submodels--the 'pure-investment' model--provides little by way of insights into the relationship between inequalities in wealth and inequalities in health. In common with other pure investment models of human capital formation, Grossman's model predicts that an individual's health investment decisions at each stage in the lifecycle will be independent of his initial wealth.