AN NBER PUBLICATION
ISSUE: No. 4, December 2003
The Bulletin on Aging & Health
In 1986, an ambitious project was launched to study the aging process of Union Army veterans, the first cohort to turn 65 during the twentieth century. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, The Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease and Death project was led by a diverse team of investigators, including economists, physicians, a demographer, and a biological anthropologist. After a data set was assembled linking vast amounts of information for a...
Article
Since 1984, hospitals have been reimbursed for care provided to Medicare patients under the Prospective Payment System (PPS). Under this system, hospitals receive a fixed payment for each patient that is determined by the patient's diagnosis-related group (DRG) at the time of admission; thus, reimbursement is unaffected by the hospital's actual expenditures on the patient.
The motivation for switching from the old cost-plus system, in which hospitals were reimbursed based...
Article
The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 enacted sweeping changes in the welfare program, including work requirements and lifetime limits on participation. As a result of PRWORA and earlier state reform efforts, as well as other factors such as a concurrent economic boom, the number of welfare recipients fell by 62 percent between 1993 and 2001, from 14.1 million to 5.4 million.
One potential unintended consequence...