National Bureau of Economic Research Releases Several Working Papers on Health Care Policy

The National Bureau of Economic Research this week released several health-related working papers, which are detailed briefly below.

• "Medicare Policy in the 1990s": The paper examines how payment changes in the Medicare system have impacted providers and insurers, as well as Medicare's long term financing outlook and the future of a prescription drug benefit (Newhouse, "Medicare Policy in the 1990s," October 2001).
• "Incentives in HMOs": The paper discusses how physician incentives offered by managed care companies impact treatment decisions. Researchers found that contracts offering physicians financial incentives to control costs typically cut medical expenses by 5% (Gaynor et al., "Incentives in HMOs," October 2001).
• "An Empirical Model of Heterogeneous Consumer Search for Retail Prescription Drugs": The paper analyzes consumer habits regarding prescription drug comparison price shopping. While 5% to 10% of patients compare prices -- price shopping is more common for drugs used to treat chronic conditions -- the paper says that consumers could save an average of $15 by conducting an "exhaustive price search" (Sorensen, "An Empirical Model of Heterogeneous Consumer Search for Retail Prescription Drugs", October 2001).
• "Household Responses to Public Home Care Programs": The paper examines how consumers make choices among available home health care choices and concludes that the use of home care services increases as the number of publicly funded services increases (Coyte/Stabile, "Household Responses to Public Home Care Programs," October 2001).