Search

The article discusses studies on chronic pain selected by the members of the Society of General Internal Medicine. It says that the papers were chosen for their potential to change generalist care of patients with chronic pain. The articles include one on the assessment of pain intensity and interference, a randomized trial on optimized antidepressant therapy and pain self-management to improve pain and depression outcomes, and one on the trends in opioid use in patients with non-cancer pain.

The expansion of women in the military is reshaping the veteran population, with women now constituting the fastest growing segment of eligible VA health care users. In recognition of the changing demographics and special health care needs of women, the VA Office of Research & Development recently sponsored the first national VA Women's Health Research Agenda-setting conference to map research priorities to the needs of women veterans and position VA as a national leader in Women's Health Research. This paper summarizes the process and outcomes of this effort, outlining VA's research priorities for biomedical, clinical, rehabilitation, and health services research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health economists use "willingness-to-pay" to assess the prospective value of novel interventions. The technique remains controversial, not least with respect to the formats under which values are elicited. The paper analyses the results of a series of studies of the same intervention valued by the same population, in which different elicitation formats were employed. The findings support the hypothesis that data collected using different formats give rise to different demand curves, from which different inferences about demand elasticity, profitability and consumer surplus will be derived. Judgements as to the relative merits of rival interventions depend crucially upon whichever format has been used to evaluate each intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimated the effect of Medicare supplemental insurance plans on Medicare expenditures, controlling for unobserved selection. For employer-sponsored policies, there was significant unobserved favorable selection into plans with and without prescription drug coverage. For individual plans, there was unobserved adverse selection into plans with drug benefits and unobserved favorable selection into plans without. Individual supplemental plans without prescription drugs increased Medicare expenditures by $914 annually, while those with drugs increased Medicare expenditures by $491. Employer policies also significantly increased Medicare expenditures ($207 without drug coverage and $447 with drug coverage), but the increase was less than that associated with individual policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]