A growing body of empirical studies have reported that social inequalities in health are as large (or even larger) in the Nordic welfare states than in many less egalitarian societies. This is highly surprising since the welfare state is rooted in income equality, free access to education and...

This paper is an extension of Brekke and Kverndokk (2014), which showed that a limited income transfers from a rich to a poor, both with equal health, will increase the concentration index. In this paper we will demonstrate that such health contingent income transfers are implicit in linear...

This paper presents a medical cost function developed for a screening programme. The medical cost function is a function of advancement both directly and indirectly through survival. We discuss how the medical cost function is affected by screening through a shift in the distribution of cancers...

According to the OECD Norway spends 47% more on health care per capita compared to Finland and about 30% more than the other Nordic countries. At the same time indicators of health status show that Norway is not better on important indicators of health. This raises the question of why there is...

It has been argued that activity based payment systems make hospitals focus on the diagnostic groups that are most profitable given costs and reimbursement rates. This article tests the hypothesis by exploring the relationship between changes in the DRG reimbursement rates and changes in the...

In the following paper we estimate the impact of obesity in childhood on health and health service use in England using instrumental variables. We use data on children and adolescents aged 3-18 years old from fifteen rounds of the Health Survey for England (1998-2012), which has measures of...

This paper investigates the extent to which conclusions from international comparison of health spending depend on different adjustment methods. The analysis shows, first, that health spending figures differ significantly because of different accounting standards. More specifically, spending on...

On the basis of a randomized controlled trial we estimate the cost per life-year gained for six different strategies for colorectal cancer screening. Individuals in the age group 50 to 64 years were randomly selected for either flexible sigmoidoscopy or a combination of flexible sigmoidoscopy...

This paper reports briefly on some of the results from a survey of academics who have written about the theory of rational addiction. The topic is important in itself because if the literature is viewed by its participants as an intellectual game, then policy makers should be aware of this so as...

This paper examines the reaction of general practitioners (GPs) to a reform in 2004 in the remuneration system for using laboratory services in general practice. Data from Norway make it possible to distinguish between income motivation and service motivation. The purpose of this paper is to...