It may pay to shop around for health care. New legislation requiring transparency in health insurance coverage allows price comparisons between hospitals, across hospital systems, and with different insurers. In a new issue brief, Vivian Ho and co-author Evelyn Li compare quality and analyze pricing data from Houston area hospitals.
How can “Food is Medicine” programs address the critical link between access to healthy food and optimal health? In a new brief, our experts outline how the Texas Consortium for the Non-Medical Drivers of Health is tackling this question.
Shreela V. Sharma, Naomi Tice, Rebecca Mak, Jacquie Klotz, Elena M. MarksNovember 27, 2023
In a review of 10 years of data, fellows Shao-Chee Sim and Elena Marks show how the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace has drastically reduced the number of uninsured Texans and urge policymakers to find ways to maximize its impact so that affordable health coverage is accessible to all.
This brief reviews federal and Texas specific policies and regulation to support the integration of non-medical services into health care payment systems.
Elena M. Marks, Jacquie Klotz, Rebecca MakJune 8, 2023
A comparison of the prices at three major Houston hospitals — Houston Methodist, St. Luke’s Health and Memorial Hermann — associated with Blue Cross Blue Shield and UnitedHealthcare PPO health plans finds wide-ranging costs for services.
In the wake of the collapse of Terra — a once-prosperous blockchain network that suffered one of the biggest falls in the history of cryptocurrency — the authors discuss recent government efforts to regulate digital assets.
Alexander Hernández Romanowski, Helen BrantleyJuly 22, 2022
This issue brief presents the results of a dynamic model similar in nature to the macroeconomic models used by the Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation in evaluating the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The model shows a modest decline in wealth inequality due to the corporate tax cuts in the TCJA.
Rising health care costs and generational attitudes toward convenience and the ability to personalize life choices are driving a trend toward greater individual responsibility over the use of health care services.
A study comparing the community benefit expenditures of two sets of Houston hospitals leads the authors to propose strategies that can better justify the tax exemptions the institutions enjoy.
Alex Alexander, Marah Short, Vivian HoFebruary 8, 2018
While academic and popular debates tend to focus on differential benefits and costs of trade across countries or industries, this brief highlights winners and losers at the level of individual firms. The authors demonstrate that preferential liberalization produces concentrated benefits among a relatively small number of very large and productive firms.
Pablo M. Pinto, Leonardo Baccini, Stephen WeymouthNovember 21, 2017