This report includes information on technological products released during FY1994, legislation in the 103rd Congress related to the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), and background information on OTA itself, among other things.

This report focuses on technologies to improve energy supply in Central Europe and the former Soviet Union. The report is divided into two parts. The first part reviews energy supply technologies for fossil–fuel and nonfossil–based energy resources. In addition, it reviews the environmental consequences of energy production and consumption. The report highlights specific needs for U.S. technology and opportunities for U.S. business. The second part of the report is devoted to policy considerations. It describes the highly varied political, economic, and social context of reform. Next, it analyzes and catalogues Western energy–related assistance and investment programs for the region. The final chapter of the report presents policy options relating to energy supply and efficiency that will promote the achievement of U.S. political and economic goals.

This report discusses the medical malpractice system that has frequently been cited as a contributor to increasing health care costs and has been targeted in many health care reform proposals as a potential source of savings. The report first examines the nature of defensive medicine, adopting a working definition of defensive medicine that embraces the complexity of the problem from both the physician and broader public policy perspectives. Finally, it comments on the potential impact of a variety of medical malpractice reforms on the practice of defensive medicine.

This paper emphasizes recent changes in the market for health care and health insurance in the Twin Cities, including the growth of managed care organizations, the growth of integrated delivery systems, the development of health insurance purchasing coalitions, and recent state health care reforms. The report concludes with a discussion of potential lessons from the Twin Cities for the health reform debate.

This report focuses on energy use in U.S. transportation, which accounts for over 60 percent of U.S. oil consumption. The report attempts to put these opinions into context by examining the current status of the system and evaluating critical problems such as congestion, presenting forecasts of future energy use, making some pointed comparisons with European transportation, and describing and evaluating a range of options for saving energy.

This paper describes and evaluates the sources of variation in analysts’ estimates of the federal budget impacts of key reform provisions. The paper also discusses potential variations in the estimates of federal budget effects of the American Health Security Act and the Managed Competition Act, and of health reform proposals in general.