Graded Return-to-Work as a Stepping Stone to Full Work Resumption
Publication date: Available online 6 April 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Lieke Kools, Pierre KoningAbstractWhile there is increasing evidence that graded return-to-work is an effective tool for the rehabilitation of sick-listed workers, little is known on the optimal timing and level of grading in return-to-work trajectories. We use administrative data from a Dutch private workplace reintegration provider to fill this gap. In order to correct for the selection bias inherent to the evaluation of activation strategies, we exploit the discretionary room of the case managers in setting up treatment plans. W...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - April 8, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Stubbing out hypothetical bias: improving tobacco market predictions by combining stated and revealed preference data
Publication date: Available online 2 April 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): John Buckell, Stephane HessAbstractIn health, stated preference data from discrete choice experiments (DCEs) are commonly used to estimate discrete choice models that are then used for forecasting behavioral change, often with the goal of informing policy decisions. Data from DCEs are potentially subject to hypothetical bias. In turn, forecasts may be biased, yielding substandard evidence for policymakers. Bias can enter both through the elasticities as well as through the model constants. Simple correction approaches exist (using ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - April 3, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Sick of retirement?
Publication date: Available online 1 April 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Nick Fabrin NielsenAbstractThis paper examines the causal effect of retirement on health and healthcare utilization using two identification strategies on Danish full population data. First, I use a reform of the statutory retirement age in an IV design. Second, I use a large discontinuity in retirement take-up at the earliest age of retirement (60) in a regression discontinuity design. The results show that early retirement leads to decreases in GP visits and hospitalizations of 8-10% in the short run. The reduction in GP visits i...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - April 2, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
[Job] Locked and [Un]loaded The Effect of the Affordable Care Act Dependency Mandate on Reenlistment in the U.S. Army
Publication date: Available online 30 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Michael S. Kofoed, Wyatt J. FrasierAbstractOne concern with employer-based health insurance is job lock or the inability for employees to leave their current employment for better opportunities for fear of losing benefits. We use the implementation of the Affordable Care Act's dependency mandate as a natural experiment. Data from the United States Army overcome some limitations in previous studies including the ability to examine workers with fixed contract expiration dates, uniform pay, and health coverage. We find that the ACA d...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - April 1, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Reference Pricing: The Case of Screening Colonoscopies
Publication date: Available online 29 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Marion Aouad, Timothy T. Brown, Christopher M. WhaleyAbstractWe study the introduction of reference pricing to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System. Reference pricing changes the relative price of using a hospital versus an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) for patients receiving a colonoscopy, leading to as good as random variation in patients’ use of ASCs. We find a 10 percentage point increase in the share of patients using an ASC, leading to a $2300 to $1700 reduction in prices paid for patients who switch to A...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 31, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Weight, Reference Points, and the Onset of Eating Disorders
Publication date: Available online 30 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Tiziano Arduini, Daniela Iorio, Eleonora PatacchiniAbstractWe investigate whether the development of eating disorders, in the form of purging, is influenced by peers’ body size through interpersonal comparisons. Using detailed information on recent cohorts of U.S. teenagers, we document a sizeable and significant negative effect of high school peers’ body mass index (BMI) on purging behavior during the adolescence for females, but not for males. Interpersonal comparisons operate through the formation of a distorted self-percep...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 31, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Editorial Board
Publication date: March 2019Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 64Author(s): (Source: Journal of Health Economics)
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 27, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Inter-brand Competition in the Convenience Store Industry, Store Density and Healthcare Utilization
Publication date: Available online 25 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Hung-Hao Chang, Chad D. MeyerhoeferAbstractWe investigate the impact of access to convenience stores and competition between convenience store chains on the use of medical care in Taiwan. Using insurance claims from 0.85 million individuals and administrative data on store sales, we find that greater store density and more inter-brand competition reduced expenditures on outpatient medical services and prescription drugs. In support of these findings, we demonstrate that convenience store competition was associated with greater con...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 27, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Physician altruism and moral hazard: (no) evidence from Finnish national prescriptions data
Publication date: Available online 19 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Giovanni Crea, Matteo M. Galizzi, Ismo Linnosmaa, Marisa MiraldoAbstractWe test the physicians’ altruism and moral hazard hypotheses using a national panel register containing all 2003-2010 statins prescriptions in Finland. We estimate the likelihood that physicians prescribe generic versus branded versions of statins as a function of the shares of the difference between what patients have to pay out of their pocket and what is covered by the insurance, controlling for patient, physician, and drug characteristics. We find that t...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 21, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Cash on delivery: Results of a randomized experiment to promote maternal health care in Kenya
Publication date: May 2019Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 65Author(s): Karen A. Grépin, James Habyarimana, William JackAbstractWe conducted a randomized controlled experiment to test whether vouchers, cash transfers, and SMS messages were effective in boosting facility delivery rates among poor, pregnant women in rural Kenya. We find a strong effect of the full vouchers and the conditional cash transfers: 48% of women with access to both interventions delivered in a health facility, while only 36% of those with neither did. Amongst women who did not receive a cash transfer, we find that a small copayment drama...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 15, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Knowing is not half the battle: Impacts of information from the National Health Screening Program in Korea
Publication date: May 2019Source: Journal of Health Economics, Volume 65Author(s): Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, Suejin A. Lee, Wilfredo LimAbstractHealth screening provides information on disease risk and diagnosis, but whether this promotes health is unclear. We estimate the impacts of information provided by Korea's National Health Screening Program by applying a regression discontinuity design around different biomarker thresholds of diabetes, obesity, and hyperlipidemia risk using administrative data that includes medical claims, biomarkers, and behavioral surveys over four years after screening. Generally, we find limited re...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 14, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Economic assessment of nutritional recommendations: a comment
Publication date: Available online 12 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Guy MeunierAbstractThis is a Comment on the paper by Irz et al. (2015) in this Journal, on nutritional recommendations. Irz et al. (2015) propose to compute the cost of a nutritional constraint as the consumer loss of surplus, derived from their observed choices. Introducing behavioral biases into an extended version of their model, I show that their proposed methodology implicitly assumes that consumer dietary choices do not involve any health considerations. The cost per Quality-Adjusted Life Year that they compute should be cor...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 13, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Knowing is Not Half the Battle: Impacts of Information from the NationalHealth Screening Program in Korea
Publication date: Available online 1 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Hyuncheol Bryant Kim, Suejin A. Lee, Wilfredo LimAbstractHealth screening provides information on disease risk and diagnosis, but whether this promotes health is unclear. We estimate the impacts of information provided by Korea's National Health Screening Program by applying a regression discontinuity design around different biomarker thresholds of diabetes, obesity, and hyperlipidemia risk using administrative data that includes medical claims, biomarkers, and behavioral surveys over four years after screening. Generally, we find ...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 4, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
Reproductive Health Care in Catholic-Owned Hospitals
Publication date: Available online 3 March 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Elaine L. Hill, David J.G. Slusky, Donna K. GintherAbstractMergers that affiliate a hospital with a Catholic owner, network, or system reduce the set of possible reproductive medical procedures since Catholic hospitals have strict prohibitions on contraception. Using changes in ownership of hospitals, we find that Catholic hospitals reduce the per bed rates of tubal ligations by 31%, whereas there is no significant change in related permitted procedures such as Caesarian sections. However, across a variety of measures, we find mini...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - March 4, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
The unobserved pattern of material hardship and health among older Americans
Publication date: Available online 28 February 2019Source: Journal of Health EconomicsAuthor(s): Paolo Li DonniAbstractThis paper investigates the relationship between self-reported health and material hardship among older Americans. Differently from income-based measures, material hardship provides a more specific description of the concrete adversities faced by the elderly. We have used the last six waves of the Health and Retirement Study to explore the relative contributions of state dependence, unobserved heterogeneity and time-specific shocks on reporting poor health, experiencing food insecurity and medication cutba...
Source: Journal of Health Economics - February 28, 2019 Category: Health Management Source Type: research
