Given the American Geriatrics Society's (AGS) commitment to improving health care for older adults by, among other means, educating older people and their caregivers about their health and healthcare choices, the AGS was delighted when, in late 2011, the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation invited the Society to join its "Choosing Wisely(®) " campaign. Choosing Wisely is designed to ...

This Article traces the transition--in Medicare, specifically, and in the American healthcare system, generally--from the aftermath of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 to the passage of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. During this time, restrictive managed care died under an onslaught of resurgent cost pressures, legislative and legal attacks, and a vehement physician and consumer backlas...

BACKGROUND Numerous simultaneous complex humanitarian emergencies strain the ability of local governments and the international community to respond, underscoring the importance of cost-effective use of limited resources. At the end of 2011, 42.5 million people were forcibly displaced, including 10.4 million refugees under the mandate of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)...

Families of children with mental health care needs who live in states with mental health parity laws have lower out-of-pocket spending and are more likely to view their spending as reasonable compared with those living in non parity states. This suggests that mental health parity laws provide important financial benefits to families of children with mental healthcare needs.

The UK’s devolved administrations (DAs) rely on block grants to finance most of their spending, but the level of grants allocated to them is not determined by any estimate of their spending needs. There are increasing calls to replace the current grant allocation mechanism with one which explicitly considers the DAs’ spending needs, although some commentators argue that assessing their needs is...

Despite the claim that technology has been one of the most important drivers of healthcare spending growth over the past decades, technology variables are rarely introduced explicitly in cost equations. Furthermore, technology is often considered exogenous. Using 1996-2007 panel data on Swiss geographical areas, we assessed the impact of technology availability on per capita healthcare spending...

Even though most American retirees benefit from Medicare coverage, a mounting body of research predicts that many will face large and increasing out-of-pocket expenditures for healthcare costs in retirement and that many already struggle to finance these costs. It is unclear, however, whether the general population understands the likely magnitude of these out-of-pocket expenditures well enough...

In many countries, healthcare services are not currently provided in a sustainable manner. Healthcare systems and institutions are still largely based on providing acute and reactionary care; this approach is not well suited to the increasing burden of chronic disease in an aging population that requires more preventative and long-term care (World Health Organization, 2002: tinyurl.com/d5mf4dp)...