Publications

In this cross-sectional analysis of the top 1000 generics in Colorado’s all-payer claims database in 2019, 45 high-cost generics that had lower-cost therapeutic alternatives of same clinical value were identified. Overall, high-cost generics were 15.6 times more expensive than their therapeutic alternatives (median values); if the lower-cost alternatives had been used, total spending would have been reduced by 88.3%.

Understanding cognitive health, its decline, and the investments that shape its age profile in later life are important in an aging society, and yet, estimating the cognitive health production function is complicated by non-random mortality and sample attrition. The author studies this dynamic selection problem in the context of education, race, and cigarette smoking, characteristics thought to affect the level, but not slope, of cognitive decline. The author develops a general framework that involves estimation of a system of dynamic equations consistent with the Grossman (1972) model.

We conducted a randomized controlled trial involving nearly 700 customer-service representatives (CSRs) in a Canadian government service agency to study whether providing CSRs with performance feedback with or without peer comparison affected their subsequent organ donor registration rates. Despite having no tie to remuneration or promotion, the provision of individual performance feedback three times over one year resulted in a 25% increase in daily signups, compared to otherwise similar encouragement and reminders.

Despite varying levels of non-profit hospital community benefit investment across counties, higher community benefit expenditures are not associated with an improvement in the selected health outcomes at the county level.

Medicare beneficiaries frequently select suboptimal Medicare Advantage plan products or elect traditional fee-for-service Medicare due to choice paralysis, cognitive impairments, and consumer health insurance illiteracy. Medicare Advantage Chronic Condition Special Needs Plans (C-SNPs) offer an opportunity to tie disease to both plan design and marketing, simplifying consumer choice architecture.

Although nearly half of all family and unpaid caregivers to older adults work, little is known about short-term work impacts of caregiving using measures encompassing both missed work time and reduced productivity while physically at work. We quantify the prevalence, costs, and correlates of caregiving-related work productivity loss.

The proposal for a national PrEP program applies some of the lessons of the national COVID vaccine campaign to HIV prevention.

In this cohort study of nursing homes experiencing severe COVID-19 outbreaks, facilities experienced considerable staffing challenges during and after outbreaks. These results suggest the need for policy action to ensure facilities’ abilities to maintain adequate staffing levels during and after infectious disease outbreaks.

Medicaid managed care insurers play a crucial role in facilitating access to buprenorphine to treat opioid use disorder. Using a novel set of provider directory and prescription claims data, we examined variation in access to in-network buprenorphine-prescribing primary care providers among Medicaid managed care enrollees.

Facing unprecedented uncertainty and drastic trade-offs between public health and other forms of human well-being, policy makers during the Covid-19 pandemic have sought the guidance of epidemiologists and economists.