Recently, the system of financing German sickness funds through payroll taxes has been criticized, and several experts have proposed a transition to uniform per-capita contributions as in the Swiss Social Health Insurance. However, the ongoing debate on these questions suffers from a certain...

In many countries, collectively financed health insurance systems or health services delivery systems (such as the NHS) exist. Typically, these institutions are financed via general taxes or specific contributions levied on earnings. As benefits are not dependent upon income, this implies a...

Wir diskutieren eine Reihe von Problemen der Rentenformel in der deutschen gesetzlichen Rentenversicherung (GRV). Wir zeigen, dass Bev¨olkerungsgruppen mit ¨uberdurchschnittlicher Lebenserwartung, insbesondere die besser Verdienenden, von den ¨ubrigen Versicherten subventioniert werden, da...

Some people believe that the impact of population ageing on future health care ex-penditures will be quite moderate due to the high costs of dying. If not age per se but proximity to death determines the bulk of expenditures, a shift in the mortality risk to higher ages will not affect lifetime...

In response to the growing burden of obesity, public primary prevention programs against obesity have been widely recommended. Several studies estimated the cost effects of diabetes prevention trials for different countries and found that diabetes prevention can be costeffective. Nevertheless,...

It is still an open question whether increasing life expectancy as such is causing higher health care expenditures (HCE) in a population. According to the "red herring" hypothesis, the positive correlation between age and HCE is exclusively due to the fact that mortality rises with age and a...