Health policy in the United States is at a new juncture in its development. Policy choices can be made based on three decades of experience during which diverse policy goals were established in succession. Health policy is also at a point where occupational therapists can make substantial contributions. In recent legislation and other health policy, the patient's functional status and quality o...

OBJECTIVES This study is to review health technology assessment (HTA) development in China during the past two decades, and to facilitate further development of HTA and its integration into policy making. METHODS The study depends very much on the extensive experiences of the authors in involvement of HTA in China. In addition, literature review and Web site searching have been used to trace ...

FEDER-41, EMPLOYEES and annuitants and their dependents who are aged 65 and over are potential beneficiaries of two Federal health insurance programs-health insurance for the aged (Medicare) and lie&h insurance for active and retired Federal employees. The two programs are in considerable measure duplicatory and most Federal employees and nnnuitnnts aged 65 and over are unable to take full adva...

Even though many employers believe that health insurance and health affect employees' productivity and firms' performance, health economists typically overlook and rarely measure firms' returns on health-related investments. Some research, however, suggests that firms may benefit economically by providing health insurance coverage for workers and their families. For example, health coverage may...

Modelling the Time on Unemployment Insurance Benefits A duration model based on the time on Unemployment Insurance (UI) benefits instead of a model based on the time till re-employment is more relevant from a cost-benefit perspective. The contribution of this paper is to extend the standard (mixed) Proportional Hazard model to account for an upper bound on the duration. We use a modified mover-...

Poor heath, large acute and long-term care medical expenses and spousal death are significant drivers of impoverishment among retirees. We document these facts and build a rich overlapping generations model that reproduces them. We use the model to assess the incentive and welfare effects of U.S. Social Security and means-tested social insurance programs, such as Medicaid and food stamp program...

XML is impacting the life insurance industry in a big way. A large number of life insurance companies has taken hold at all major life insurance companies. Most companies are in the process of exploring XML usage and the need for a standard vocabulary in order to facilitate communication. The widespread adoption and success of XML in the industry is due to comes from the proliferation of severa...

This paper explores two related questions: Does unsecured debt help households supplement lost earnings during unemployment, and does limited access to such credit have important welfare implications? These questions have become particularly relevant as consumers increasingly rely on unsecured debt to finance consumption. Growth in unsecured debt has been most striking among the poor. Some rese...

By Thomas J . Woofter, Jr.* T H E CONCENTRATION OF children in families with low incomes was discussed in a previous article. Some of this analysis of the composition and income of nonfarm families receiving wages or salaries only is recapitulated in table 1. I t was pointed out that nearly half of the children (under 18 years of age) were in the one-seventh of the families which had three or m...

The effects of retiree health insurance on the decision to retire have not been examined until recently. It is an area of increasing significance because of rising health care costs for retirees, the uncertain future of Medicare, and increased life expectancy. In general, studies suggest that individual retirement decisions are strongly responsive to the availability of retiree health insurance...