Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs.

The NBER hosted a Conference on Research in Income and Wealth (CRIW) meeting in Washington on "Measuring and Modeling Health Care Costs" on October 18 and 19, 2013. The organizers were Ana Aizcorbe of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Colin Baker of the National Institutes of Health, and NBER Research Associates Ernst Berndt of MIT and David Cutler of Harvard University. The following papers were discussed:

* Hitoshi Shigeoka, Simon Fraser University, "The Effect of Patient Cost Sharing on Utilization, Health, and Risk Protection"

* Colin Baker; and Ralph Bradley, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "The Simultaneous Effects of Obesity, Insurance Choice, and Medical Visit Choice on Healthcare Costs"

* Frank Lichtenberg, Columbia University and NBER, "The Impact of Biomedical Knowledge Accumulation on Mortality: A Bibliometric Analysis of Cancer Data"

* Brian Chansky, Corby Garner, and Ronjoy Raichoudhary, Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Measuring Output and Productivity in Private Hospitals"

* Jacob Glazer, Boston University; Thomas McGuire, Harvard University and NBER; and Julie Shi, Harvard University, "Risk Adjustment of Health Plan Payments to Correct Inefficient Plan Choice from Adverse Selection"

* Paul Schreyer, OECD, and Matilde Mas, Instituto Valenciano de Investigaciones Economicas (IVIE) and University of Valencia, "Measuring Health Services in the National Accounts: An International Perspective"

* Pinar Karaca-Mandic, University of Minnesota and NBER; Jean Abraham and Roger Feldman, University of Minnesota; and Kosali Simon, Indiana University and NBER, "Going into the Affordable Care Act: Measuring the Size, Structure and Performance of the Individual and Small Group Markets for Health Insurance"

* Armando Franco, University of California, Berkeley; Dana Goldman, University of Southern California and NBER; Adam Leive, University of Pennsylvania; and Daniel McFadden, University of California, Berkeley and NBER, "A Cautionary Tale in Comparative Effectiveness Research: Pitfalls and Perils of Observational Data Analysis"

* Murray...