Trends in Employee Wage and Health Insurance Compensation for Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance (ESI) Coverage

Health insurance coverage continues to be an important benefit of employment and employer-sponsored insurance is the most prominent form of health coverage in the US. We examine trends in both employer and employee contributions to the costs of health insurance premium between 2002 and 2005 and assess these contributions relative to changes in worker wages. We do this for the US overall and for the 50 states plus the District of Columbia. We found a significant increase of 15.5% in the share of total compensation going toward health benefits (from 12.3–14.2%) for workers with individual coverage and an increase of 13.5% (from 20.6–23.4%) for workers with family coverage. Wages over this time period decreased 3.0% for workers with individual coverage and increased 0.8% for workers with family coverage.     

How physicians can create their future

This article responds to the need for physicians to become proactive, using strategic planning to address changing conditions in the health care field. Strategic planning purposes are defined and a common process of strategic planning is presented. A case study analysis includes commentary on the need for planning, the context of planning in a larger system, process and procedure, a sample plan, benefits and actions to date, and future uses of the plan. Implications of this case of strategic planning for other physicians are discussed.     

The publishing of recent economics Ph.D. recipients

We present publication data for recent graduates of 50 economics Ph.D. programs. The data show that publishing output is highly concentrated among graduates of the top programs; the top three programs, for example, generate more than 25% of aggregate publishing output in our sample. We use the data to construct a set of program rankings based on both per capita and aggregate graduate publication and a comparison of faculty performance to graduate performance. The graduate/faculty comparison reveals that programs may be identical in the output of their faculties but starkly different in the output of their graduates.