Emmet Keeler, Ph.D.

Professor, Health Services Professor, RAND Graduate School RAND Health 1776 Main Street Santa Monica, CA 90407-2138 (310) 393-0411 x7239 Fax: (310) 260-8013 E-mail: emmett@rand.org

Biographical Information

Emmett B. Keeler is a professor in the Department of Health Services, a professor at the RAND graduate school and a senior mathematician at RAND. He joined RAND in 1968 after getting a Ph.D. in mathematics from Harvard. He led a large study to evaluate a new model for helping people with chronic diseases manage their health better. He directs a project that supplies cost-effectiveness analyses to a variety of UCLA geriatric interventions. In the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, he investigated the theoretical and empirical effects of alternative health insurance plans on episodes of treatment and on health outcomes. He taught at Harvard and the University of Chicago while on leave from RAND. He received article-of-the-year awards from the Association for Health Services Research for papers on outlier payments (1988), on the costs to others of bad health habits (1989), and on whether impoverished Medicare patients receive worse care in hospitals than do other patients (1994). He is the author or co-author of over 150 refereed articles, and 4 books. He won the distinguished investigator Award from the AcademyHealth and is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine.

Selected Publications

Emmett Keeler, Jack M. Guralnik, Haijun Tian, Robert B. Wallace, David B. Reuben, The impact of functional status on life expectancy in older persons", Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciences J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci (2010) doi: 10.1093/gerona/glq029

Melnick G, Keeler E. The Effects of Multi-Hospital Systems on Hospital Prices.  Journal of Health Economics, 26: 400-413 (2007)

Keeler E, Perkins MD, Small P et al., Reducing the global burden of tuberculosis: the contribution of improved diagnostics Nature S1 49-57 (2006)

A Model of the Impact of Reimbursement Schemes on Health Plan Choice, Emmett Keeler, Grace Carter, Joe Newhouse, J Hlth Econ (17) 297-320, 1998.

"Hospital Characteristics and Quality of Care," (E. Keeler et al.) JAMA, (268) 1709-1714, 1992.

"The Taxes of Sin: Do Smokers and Drinkers Pay their Way," (W. Manning, E. Keeler et al.), Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 261, March 17, 1989, pp. 1604-1609

"The Demand for Episodes of Treatment in the Health Insurance Experiment," Journal of Health Economics, Vol. 7, 1988, pp. 337-367. (E.Keeler, J. Rolph)


"Discounting of Life-Saving and Other Non-monetary Effects," Management Science, March 1983 (E. Keeler, S. Cretin).

"Deductibles and the Demand for Medical Services: The Theory of a Consumer Facing a Variable Price Schedule Under Uncertainty," Econometrica, August 1977 (E. Keeler, J. Newhouse, C. Phelps

"Optimal Doubling in Backgammon," Operations Research, November 1975. (E. Keeler, J. Spencer)