Description: The report discusses the oral health of children eligible for Medicaid, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its Subcommittee on Health and the Environment requested OTA to determine whether children eligible for Medicaid are provided at least a minimum level of dental care. This study compares the dental manuals of seven State Medicaid programs with a set of “basic’ dental services (which comprise shared components of various well-accepted dental guidelines) to see if States allow these particular services.

Description: This Background Paper examines the evidence of the effectiveness of drug abuse treatment; it also evaluates the role that such treatment might play in reducing the spread of HIV. Because most intravenous drug users are not in treatment, the paper also examines other approaches to HIV prevention among this high-risk group.

Description: This report is about access of people in rural America to basic health care services. This report focuses on trends in the availability of primary and acute health care in rural areas and factors affecting those trends.

Description: In this report OTA gives a broad overview of the qualities of the competing fuels and examines in depth some of the most contentious issues associated with the wisdom of active Federal support for introducing the fuels. Areas of uncertainty that affect the debate on Federal support include fuel cost (including costs of building new infrastructure and modifying vehicles); the air quality effects of the new fuels; effects on energy security; other environmental impacts of the fuels; and consumer acceptance of the changes in vehicle performance, refueling procedures, costs, and other facets of the transportation system that would follow a large-scale introduction of any of the fuels. The report singles out for special examination the arguments concerning the costs, energy security implications, and air quality impacts of introducing methanol fuels into the fleet.

Description: This report describes the unconventional cancer treatments that are most used by U.S. cancer patients; it describes the way in which people find out about them and how much they pay for them; reviews the claims made for them and the information base in support of the claims; suggests possible ways of generating valid information about their safety and effectiveness; and presents the legal issues surrounding unconventional treatments that have brought civil and criminal litigation to bear on the subject.