Rising costs in pharmaceutical expenditure have become a major concern for policy makers in Germany over the last years. Therefore the pharmaceutical market in Germany has been increasingly targeted by different kinds of regulations, focussing both on the supply and the demand side, using price,...

In many sectors of the health care system, prices at which providers are reimbursed by payers are not determined by the market mechanism, but rather by a defined administrative process. Depending on the sector, prices are set politically and are negotiated between different actors or are...

This paper studies the politico-economic reasons for the refusal of a proposed compulsory flood insurance scheme in Germany. It provides the rationale for such scheme and outlines the basic features of a market-orientated design. The main reasons for the political down-turn of this proposal were...

This thesis describes the status quo of the Taiwanese health care system in the year 2000, 5 years after the reforms, analyses the economic efficiency of single components of the new health care system and searches for possible solutions to solve uncovered problems. For a better understanding of...

In times of ever-rising health expenditures it is becoming more and more obvious that conventional models for funding health care are increasingly experiencing difficulties in meeting up this challenge. The concept of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) represents an innovative and so far rarely...

Das Konzept der Medical Savings Accounts als Instrument zur Finanzierung von Gesundheitssystemen hat in den letzten Jahren international Aufmerksamkeit erregt. In Deutschland wurde ein ähnliches Konzept für die Gesetzliche Rentenversicherung im Rahmen der Riester Rente diskutiert. Länder wie...

Angesichts steigender Gesundheitsausgaben spielen Gesundheitssystemvergleiche in den letzten Jahren eine immer größere Rolle. Solche Benchmarks können sinnvolle Anregungen zur Verbesserung von Gesundheitssystemen darstellen. Viele Gesundheitssystemvergleiche unterstellen implizit ein...

Krankenversicherungssysteme induzieren häufig Wohlfahrtsverluste aufgrund asymetrischer Informationen. Neben einem Anstieg der Gesundheitsausgaben bewirken diese eine ineffiziente Allokation von Ressourcen. Einige empirische Studien schätzen den Wohlfahrtsverlust sogar so gross, dass er den...

In Germany, cost-sharing for health care has been used as a financing mechanism since 1923. In this article, the historical development of user charges in Germany since the 1980s is presented in more detail by type of private expenditure, including direct payments, cost-sharing measures, and...

In all four countries health care expenditures grow while the revenue remains at the same level or even shrinks in many cases. Due to medical progress, ageing and many other factors the gap is widening over time. The pay-as-you-go approach is running against limits either with rising employer...