The utility of Medicaid claims for studying cancer care is not known. Our objective was to evaluate how well Medicaid claims capture diagnostic and treatment information recorded by the California Cancer Registry (CCR). We compared cancer treatment from Medicaid claims with CCR data, using 1988-2000 cases matched with 1997-1998 Medicaid enrollment data. Medicaid claims corroborated diagnoses fo...

Over 1.3 million new cancer cases are diagnosed each year. While most cancer patients are older and covered by Medicare, our analysis indicates that 10 percent of cancer patients under age sixty-five are uninsured and that 20 percent of Hispanic cancer patients under age sixty-five are uninsured. We find substantial differences in cancer spending by insurance status; uninsured patients under ag...

A new analysis of health insurance coverage in America reveals a complex and troubling picture of insurance instability and gaps in coverage over time. Eighty-five million people, or 38 percent of the population under age 65, were uninsured at some point from 1996 through 1999, based on findings from a survey that followed people’s health coverage for four years (Chart 1).The number of people w...

local information about tillage intensity and ground residue coverage is useful for policies in agricultural extension, tillage implement design and upgrading management methods. the current methods for assessing crop residue coverage and tillage intensity such as residue weighing methods, line-transect and photo comparison methods are tedious and time-consuming. the present study was devoted t...

Background & objectives: Vaccination coverage in India is far from complete despite the commitment to universal coverage. In this study, we examine the role of health infrastructure in expanding immunization coverage in rural India. Our approach differs from prior work in that we include detailed measures of village health infrastructure that account for the wide variations in health care capab...

Introduction The extended program of immunization (EPI) in Iran is started in 1984, and it played an important and effective role in controlling many infectious diseases in community. The objective of this study was to determine the time trends of vaccination coverage by the type of vaccine among children, in the age group of 0-24 months, in Iran from the beginning of EPI (1984) to 2013. Materi...

BACKGROUND Radiation therapy is the mainstay of treatment for nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Importance of tumor coverage and challenges posed by its unique and critical location are well evident. Therefore we aimed to evaluate our radiation treatment plan through dose volume histograms (DVHs) to find planning target volume (PTV) dose coverage and factors affecting it. MATERIALS AND METHODS This r...

To assess the performance of the employment-based health insurance system, it is necessary to understand how well workers sort into jobs that offer their desired mix of cash wages relative to benefits. However, few studies directly measure the extent of sorting. We quantify the prevalence of mismatches between workers’ preferences and firms’ insurance offerings by considering two types of misma...

Maryland Medicaid and the Maryland Children’s Health Program (MCHP) provide health care services to low-income individuals. Between them, the two programs cover over 950,000 individuals, approximately 80 percent of whom receive services through HealthChoice, a capitated managed care program. Beginning in January 2014, the Medicaid expansion that is included in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is e...