A consumer-driven health plan (CDHP), also known as a consumer-directed health plan, is a health insurance plan design increasingly prevalent in the United States. CDHPs are a specific type of high-deductible health plan generally including a health savings account (HSA) or a health reimbursement arrangement (HRA). Compared to traditional commercial health plans—such as a health maintenance org...

Elderly widows are three times as likely to live in poverty as older married people. This study investigates this gap, as well as the gap in wealth and income more generally, using national panel data from the 1990s in the United States. It is found that 44 percent of the difference in economic status between widows (and widowers) and married elderly is due to differences in economic status tha...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Medication access is crucial to secondary stroke prevention. We assessed medication access and associated barriers to care across region and time in a national sample of US stroke survivors. METHODS Among all 5840 black or white stroke survivors aged > or =45 years responding to the National Health Interview Survey years 1997 to 2004, we examined inability to afford med...

We evaluated the performance of a regression model in predicting enrollment status in a chemoprevention trial for breast cancer using a population independent of that from which the model was derived. In years 1 and 2 of recruitment, questionnaires were completed by eligible participants following attendance at informational meetings about the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial. The variables in th...

Background Diabetes peer support, where one person with diabetes helps others, may improve diabetes management. The objective of this study was to perform a cost analysis of peer support strategies used in RAndomized controlled trial of Peer Support in type 2 Diabetes. Methods We performed a 2×2 factorial randomized cluster controlled trial in England. People with type 2 diabetes were invited...