UK Local Authorities purchase care home places on behalf of a large group of people following a means test of their income and wealth. All other buyers of care home services are atomistic. The care home market is characterised by a large number of small providers. Local authorities may thus have...

We assess the productivity growth of the English and Italian healthcare systems over the period from 2004 to 2011. The English (NHS) and the Italian (SSN) healthcare systems share many similar features, facilitating comparison: basic founding principles, financing, organization, management, and...

Aktuell weisen die Krankenkassen und der Gesundheitsfonds Überschüsse von über 20 Mrd. Euro auf. Für Daniel Bahr, Bundesminister für Gesundheit, eröffnen diese Überschüsse – neben der Abschaffung der Praxisgebühr – Spielräume für Prämien. Die zentrale Herausforderung an eine...

Klaus-Dirk Henke, TU Berlin und Wolfram Richter, TU Dortmund, identifizieren in ihrem Kommentar gravierende Ordnungsdefizite beim Wettbewerb im deutschen Gesundheitswesen. Sie gehen solchen Defiziten im Bereich der GKV nach und benennen konkrete Mängel, die von der Politik behoben werden sollten.

Das Krankenversicherungssystem in Deutschland ist seit Jahren in der Kritik. Reformbedarf besteht sowohl bei der Gesetzlichen als auch bei der Privaten Krankenversicherung. Ist ein einheitlicher Versicherungsmarkt die Lösung? Peter Oberender und Jürgen Zerth, Universität Bayreuth, sehen in...

The aim of this article is to analyze the relationship between drug price and drug quality and how it varies across two of the most common regulatory regimes in the pharmaceutical market: Minimum Efficacy Standards (MES) and Price Controls (PC). We develop a model of adverse selection where a...

This paper investigates the potential of an infant intervention to improve life expectancy, contributing to emerging interest in the early life origins of chronic disease. We analyse a pioneering program trialled in Sweden in the 1930s, which provided information, support and monitoring of...

This paper investigates the impact of the public smoking ban which came into effect in Italy on January 2005 on individual smoking behaviour. Current empirical evidence supports the existence of a negative effect of the Italian ban on smoking prevalence and consumption in the general population....

This paper investigates the effect of price variations on the diet composition in Britain. It describes the dynamics of food demand in relation to food prices over time using data from the British National Food Survey (NFS) covering the period 1975-2000. Demand elasticities with respect to price...

We investigate restructuring of the health system in Brazil motivated to operationalize universal health coverage. Using administrative data from multiple sources and an event study approach that exploits the staggered rollout of programmatic changes across municipalities, we find large...