Will choice-based reform work for Medicare? Evidence from the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.
Over the past several decades, the Medicare program has experimented with providing Medicare beneficiaries health plan choices through its managed care program. As a result of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003, the health plan choices available to Medicare beneficiaries expand dramatically. Beginning in...

Health benefits offer rates: is there a nonresponse bias?
Over 44 million Americans are without health insurance, leaving the U.S. alone among the industrialized nations of the world in which a substantial share of its population is without health coverage. About 80 percent of the uninsured are families in which the head-of-household works either full- or part-time (Hoffman...

Healthy choices: using creative solutions--from regional pools to wellness programs and consumer-directed health plans--to manage healthcare costs.
EMPLOYEES OF THE OTTAWA Area Intermediate School District in southwestern Michigan can check their blood pressure in faculty lounges, attend lunch-and-learn sessions on health topics and get free over-the-counter allergy and heartburn medicines. Their raises depend in part on how well they collectively manage their health care claims costs....

Saskatchewan.
The Saskatchewan Assembly began its spring session on March 6th by welcoming a new Member. Saskatchewan Party candidate Nancy Heppner was victorious in the March 5th by-election in the constituency of Martensville, winning with 77% of the vote. She succeeds her father, Ben Heppner, who held the...

Employer-based insurance coverage in trouble.
WASHINGTON -- Companies both large and small are finding it increasingly difficult to afford the health insurance coverage they have traditionally provided to their workers, experts warned at a conference sponsored by AcademyHealth. Employer-based insurance remains the dominant source of coverage in the American health care system....

Sen. Breaux pushes for individual insurance mandate.
NEW ORLEANS -- The real social crisis facing America right now isn't fixing Social Security but tackling the problem of the uninsured, former Sen. John Breaux said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology. "The crisis that I see in health care in this...

Employers decide whether to provide employee benefits.
Byline: ON THE JOB Bureau of Labor & Industries Question: I have been working at my current job for more than a month. I called in sick yesterday and my supervisor told me that I did not have any sick leave available yet. He offered to authorize...

Senator Breaux pushes for individual insurance mandate.
NEW ORLEANS -- The real social crisis facing America right now isn't fixing Social Security but tackling the problem of the uninsured, former Sen. John Breaux said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology. "The crisis that I see in health care in this...

US charities hit by health care costs.
BALTIMORE -- Charities and other non-profits are paying a "silent tax" according to a report by Johns Hopkins Center for Civil Society Studies as part of its Nonprofit Listening Post Project. It indicates that U.S. nonprofit organizations are being hit harder than most other enterprises by escalating health benefit...

Employer health care costs slowing.
Employer health care costs will increase an estimated 8% in 2005, the first single-digit increase in more than 5 years, according to a survey by Towers Perrin, a New York consulting firm. The survey of 200 employers with an average of 9,000 employees projects that employer health care costs...