Streaming multimedia data on the Internet is developing as a mainstream technology, which attracts many users by providing a new and convenient form of access to online multimedia information. While its strong business potential is obvious, many problems related to charging, copyright protection, and privacy can delay or even hinder its extensive deployment. In this paper, we are concerned with...

In a recently concluded Medicare demonstration, Community Nursing Organizations (CNOs) received capitated payment to provide a subset of Medicare services through a nursing case management delivery system. Demonstration participation was voluntary, both for CNOs and recruited beneficiaries, raising several challenging issues associated with selection. We investigate provider and beneficiary sel...

Article history: Received 5 August 2009 Accepted 7 August 2009 China has recently unveiled an ambitious new health-care reform plan, entailing a doubling of government health spending as well as a number of concrete reforms. While the details of the plan have not yet been completely announced, we offer a preliminary assessment of how well the reform is likely to achieve its stated goal of assur...

The concept of green payments together with single and multiple bidding processes for short-term spectrum auctions are compared based on two reference cases: (1) when the users and the auctioneer are aware of the value of the reserve price, and (2) when the value of the reserve price is known only to the auctioneer. This involves a novel concept known as the green payment. This concept is combi...

Shared savings is a payment strategy that offers incentives for providers to reduce health care spending for a defined patient population by offering them a percentage of net savings realized as a result of their efforts. The concept has attracted great interest, in part fueled by Affordable Care Act provisions that create accountable care organizations and by the movement among medical home pi...

105 Medicare Payment Advisory Commission and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation created by the ACA, will need to be negotiated. Although multiple entities pursuing the same tasks could stumble over each other, there are also real opportunities for synergy. In particular, shared staffing between the IPAB and the innovation center could strengthen both. The legislative requirement th...

OBJECTIVE This paper uses an economic model to compare three methods for stimulating quality improvement: payment incentives, competition for patients, and emphasis on professional ethics. DESIGN Use an economic model to simulate the impact on quality distortions (risk selection) of differences in payment incentives, competition for patients, and emphasis on professional ethics. SETTING Hea...

Central bank spending on the operation of inter-bank funds transfer systems may range from below one million to nearly a billion US dollars annually. This paper examines how such costs are incurred and recovered to pursue payment systems efficiency in different countries and under alternative policy approaches. The key findings are as follows. First, strong scale economy effects were found, wit...

This paper reviews the existing empirical micro-level models of demand for out-patient physician services where the size of patient payment is included either directly as an independent variable (when a flat-rate co-payment fee) or indirectly as a level of deductibles and/or co-insurance defined by the insurance coverage. The paper also discusses the relevance of these models for the assessment...