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This article examines how having a choice of health plans, HMO enrollment, and health status affect the use of preventive services. For preventive services use, HMO enrollment is endogenous for workers with a choice of plans, but is exogenous for workers who do not have a choice. Relative to a model that ignores the effect of a choice of plans, the effect of HMO enrollment on the use of preventive treatments is reduced. Individuals who do not have a choice of plans but are enrolled in HMOs are more likely to use preventive services than are individuals who choose HMOs. (JEL I10, I11, I12)

Abstract. The Supreme Court's ruling in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services increased the political saliency of the abortion issue. Since pro‐choice and pro‐life groups within the constituencies of U.S. legislators paid closer attention to abortion‐related roll call votes after Webster, the legislators'voting behavior on such issues might have changed as a result of the decision. Accordingly, voting model estimates for abortion funding issues before and after Webster are used to examine changes in the role of legislators' personal policy preferences and the role of policy preferences among their constituency on voting on this issue. The results show that legislators, to some extent, vote according to their personal preferences on abortion funding issues. Moreover, the influence of personal preferences on voting behavior did not change substantially after Webster, despite the change in the outcome of the vote.

This study assesses the impact of parental involvement laws on adolescent abortion rates and pregnancy rates. The analysis estimates abortion rate and pregnancy rate models using state‐level data pooled over time for adolescents aged 15–17 compared to older teens aged 18–19 and adults aged 20–44. The results indicate that parental involvement laws reduce adolescent abortion rates and may, to a lessor degree, reduce adolescent pregnancy rates. Thus, the findings imply that enforcement of parental involvement laws will increase adolescent fertility rates.

In response to the Supreme Court's rulings in Webster v. Reproductive Services and Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, which increased the ability of states to restrict abortions, many state legislatures have reexamined their abortion policies. Several recent studies use a variety of methods to predict whether states will restrict abortion access. These studies have utilized congressional votes on abortion legislation, past state laws restricting abortions, or current attitudes by state legislators and governors. Each method has its merits and limitations. This paper uses recent votes in the states' House of Representatives pertaining to abortion issues to predict the likelihood of significant abortion restrictions. These results are compared with rankings from other recent studies.

Over 1.5 million legal abortions were performed in the United States in 1988. State‐level regulation affecting the price or availability of abortion services may expand given recent Supreme Court decisions. This paper uses state‐level data pooled over time to estimate abortion demand. Using single cross‐sections of state data, past studies find abortion demand per 1,000 pregnancies to be price inelastic and find income elasticity to be positive and significant. The analysis here shows that price elasticity estimates in a single cross‐section are sensitive to the choice of state characteristics used to control for "abortion attitudes" within a state. Ajixed‐efects model design with pooled data gives more robust abortion demand price elasticity estimates. The results suggest that any new state regulations that increase the costs of obtaining abortions will reduce abortion use and increase unintended fertility.

State regulatory constraints on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing, the use of information on sexual orientation, & acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)-related modifications in standard insurance contracts are examined through logistic regression analysis of state-level data. HIV testing restrictions tend to be more likely in states with relatively high AIDS prevalance rates & insurance industries that are relatively weak politically. States with prevailing attitudes favorable to persons with AIDS are more likely than other states to impose HIV testing restrictions. Prevailing attitudes appear to be the primary determinants prohibiting questions about sexual orientation, but economic interests are the primary determinants of mandated AIDS coverage. 1 Table, 2 Appendixes, 51 References.

Relationship between high AIDS prevalence rates and state government constraints on AIDS-related underwriting practices; US.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services giving more discretion to states to regulate abortion has led to speculation concerning which states might move to limit abortions. Medoff (1989) attempts to predict how state legislatures might vote on state‐level abortion legislation by examining the 1983 Senate vote on the Hatch/Eagleton Amendment. We expand upon Medoff's analysis by incor‐ porating recent developments in agency theory as it applies to the political agents (i.e., Senators) in the empirical model. The results demonstrate that accounting for Senatorial "shirking" and state ideology substantially im‐ proves the predictive ability of the model for the Senate abortion vote. The predicted votes of the state's Senators, after eliminating the effects of apparent Senatorial shirking, are used to infer the likelihood of state‐level legislation substantially restricting abortion. We compare these results to a base model that ignores the issue of shirking and find increased predict‐ ability and several differing results.