The Chilean authorities plan to raise budgetary allocations over the medium term for a variety of social programmes, including education, health care and housing. This incremental spending will need to be carried out in a cost-efficient manner to make sure that it yields commensurate improvements in social outcomes. Chile's health indicators show…

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.…

Almost thirty years ago, Justice William Brennan saw clearly that American higher education was coming under the same pressures to "cut costs and increase efficiencies" to which market forces were subjecting businesses. Since Justice Brennan's observation, employers generally have sought to maximize their "flexibility' by creating a…

A fundamental concern with competitive health insurance markets is that they will not supply efficient levels of coverage for treatment of costly, chronic, and predictable illnesses, such as mental illness. Since the inception of employer-based health insurance, coverage for mental health services has been offered on a more limited basis than…

This report has been provided to the Legislature on an annual basis since 2000 when the legislature amended the language of G.L. c. 71B to align Massachusetts special education terminology with the federal "Individuals with Disabilities Education Act" ("IDEA"). The Department is required to submit an annual report on compliance…

Professional psychology's ability to meet older Americans' psychological needs and to simultaneously thrive as a profession will be closely tied to the federal Medicare program over the coming decades. Despite legislative changes in the 1980s providing professional autonomy to psychologists and expanding coverage for mental health services,…

Data from the Evidence-based Treatment Survey were used to compare providers serving families in American Indian and Alaska Native communities to their counterparts in non-American Indian/Alaska Native communities on provider characteristics and factors that influence their decision to use evidence-based practices (N = 467). The findings suggest…

Head Start is a federally funded preschool program for poor children designed to help close the gap between those children and their more advantaged peers before they begin public schooling. Given that Head Start appears to have positive long-run impacts on its recipients, a natural and important next question to ask is: What are the channels…

The greater New Orleans area has yet to fully recover from the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall on August 29, 2005. One issue of concern in the recovery is the availability of mental health services for children. It is estimated that in 2008 about 187,000 children were living in the greater New Orleans area. Many children in the…

Very little research has been conducted on insurance type (private vs. public funded) and costs, accessibility, and use of services of children with autism. Analysis of five parent reported outcomes: (a) out-of-pocket expenditures, (b) variety of services used, (c) access to services, (d) child and family service outcomes, and (e) satisfaction…

This document is the first of three documents which present the Senate hearings on catastrophic health insurance called to determine how the private sector and the government can work together to lend support to the elderly and their families when they are threatened by catastrophic illness and to examine the issue of coverage of catastrophic…

This document, the second in a series of three which present the text of Senate hearings on catastrophic health insurance, focuses on the impact of catastrophic health insurance on consumers and health care providers. Testimony is included by these witnesses: (1) Senator Pete V. Domenici; (2) Wilbur Cohen, professor of Public Affairs, University…

The author describes his work to help Chrysler Corporation combat high medical care costs. He discusses what the United States must do as a whole to bring costs down. He also predicts that, if his guidelines are followed, within 10 years the number of hospital beds will be cut in half. (CH)

A Missouri school system has cut benefit costs by establishing a self-funded health insurance plan for employees. Reviews areas to consider and ways to set up such a plan. (MD)

Prior to the enactment of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), policymakers examined the need to safeguard the private insurance market from "crowd out," the substitution of public health insurance coverage for private health insurance coverage. This qualitative study examined how 18 states are addressing crowd out, the…