Student health insurance experiences the same inflationary trends as employee benefits, but is rarely viewed as a significant direct cost to an institution, nor is the bill as high as the costs associated with employee health plans. Several long-term solutions and strategies that could help colleges to contain the ever-escalating cost of providing…

Investing in a good education for all of America's students benefits both individuals and the nation as a whole. Some advantages are immediate; others pay off over the longer term. The benefits range from personal wealth to lower health care costs to increased tax revenue. The "Facts for Education Advocates" feature in this edition discusses some…

Context: The Certified Safe Farm (CSF) intervention program aims to reduce occupational injuries and illnesses, and promote wellness to reduce health care and related costs to farmers, insurers, and other stakeholders. Purpose: To evaluate the cost effectiveness of CSF. Methods: Farms (316) located in a 9-county area of northwestern Iowa were…

Context: Few studies have examined hospitalization patterns among the uninsured, especially from the perspective of rural and urban differences. Purpose: To examine whether the patterns of uninsured hospitalizations differ in rural and urban hospitals and to identify the most prevalent and costly diagnoses among uninsured hospitalizations.…

Background: Disability research data often exist in the form of individual records located within discrete registers that may extend across sensitive political boundaries. Method: This paper discusses the opportunities and challenges associated with using linked health and administrative data for disability research, with examples from research…

Around the world, the fight for affordable medical treatment is intensifying. Headline-grabbing battles are being waged in India, where the Chennai High Court recently decided a major constitutional case over access to lifesaving cancer medication. In Thailand, Abbott Laboratories, a multinational pharmaceutical giant, has withdrawn registration…

Background: This paper considers some economic aspects of a therapy and support service for people with stroke and aphasia. This material was part of a broader evaluation of the service, which is reported elsewhere (van der Gaag et al. 2005, van der Gaag and Mowles 2005). Aims: The purpose of this part of the study was to investigate the…

In this study, the authors examined perceived benefits and costs of the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). Mixed accounts of benefits and costs, rather than exclusive accounts of only benefits or costs, were proposed to be characterized by nondefensiveness and enduring changes in psychosocial resources. Participants were 70 SARS…

Employed a 6-year retrospective cohort design to examine the relationship between health indicators variables, health insurance costs, and utilization. Data collected from 1,940 employees who belonged to a worksite health plan indicated that employees with problematic health risk factors had a significantly higher probability of submitting health…

Purpose: We determined the prognostic value of self-reported and performance-based measurement of function, including functional transitions and combining different measurement approaches, on utilization. Design and Methods: Our cohort study used the 6th, 7th, and 10th waves of three sites of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies…

Autism has lifetime consequences, with potentially a range of impacts on the health, wellbeing, social integration and quality of life of individuals and families. Many of those impacts are economic. This study estimated the costs of autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) in the UK. Data on prevalence, level of intellectual disability and place of…

Idling at the crossroads and faced with ever-increasing health care costs, the Louisiana State University System chose the road less traveled and instituted a consumer-driven benefits plan. In this article, the authors provide an overview of the consumer-driven programs LSU has adopted and how these programs have helped curb costs and improve the…

Context: Rural hospitals face multiple financial burdens. Due to federal law, emergency departments (ED) provide a gateway for uninsured and self-pay patients to gain access to treatment. It is unknown how much uncompensated care in rural hospitals is due to ED visits. Purpose: To develop a national estimate of uncompensated care from patients…

Purpose: Little is known about whether an association exists between agency ownership and length of service among home care patients with different payment sources. This study investigated how for-profit and not-for-profit agencies responded to policy changes in the 1990s with respect to length of service. Design and Methods: We examined length of…

In the late 1990s, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation made grants to study people's attitudes toward retirement and to determine what factors influenced their decisions to retire. Although faculty were not talking to college administrators or human-resources departments about health care, the researchers found to their surprise that when they…