We investigate whether people enrolled into voluntary health insurance (VHI) substitute public consumption with private … the case of Italy, where a mixed insurance system is in place. To this purpose, we specify a joint model for public and … private specialist visits counts, and allow for different degrees of endogenous supplementary insurance coverage, looking at …

raise health care spending efficiency. …This paper presents a set of indicators to assess health care system performance. It also presents new comparative data … on health care policies and institutions for OECD countries. This set of indicators allows the empirical characterisation …

Overall, the health of the Irish population has improved substantially during recent decades and is quite good compared …. Population ageing is exacerbating spending pressures. In addition, the health sector is dealing with past underspending … health areas is set to support more decentralised decision-making, but information systems to track spending and reform …

individuals are differently motivated in that they have different missions, and their self-selection into sectors or organizations … with matching missions enhances organizational efficiency. We test Besley and Ghatak's model using data from a unique … cohort study. We generate two proxies for intrinsic motivations: a survey-based measure of the health professionals …

In Germany, employees are generally obliged to participate in the public health insurance system, where coverage is … instead if their income exceeds the compulsory insurance threshold. Here, premia are based on age and health, individuals may … private insurance coverage on the number of doctor visits, the number of nights spent in a hospital and self-assessed health …

Most developing countries face shortages of health workers in rural areas. This has profound consequences for health … service delivery, and ultimately for health outcomes. To design policies that rectify these geographic imbalances it is vital … to understand what factors determine health workers' choice to work in rural areas. But empirical analysis of health …

efficiency problems. Owing to its design, the price signal in the new financing system for social health insurance will be both … insurers could reduce incentives for risk selection, raising chances for competition to lead to more cost-effectiveness instead …. However, the segmentation of the healthcare system in a private and a social insurance market will continue to pose equity and …

This paper assesses the performance of the United States health system in an international context and discusses … potential directions for reform. The US health system is unique among OECD countries in its heavy reliance on the private sector … for both financing and delivery of health care. The public sector plays a not-insignificant role, providing coverage for …

An ambitious reform to increase efficiency of the Portuguese health care system was launched in 2002. In contrast to … health sector, making changes essentially irreversible. The reform has two main aims: to deliver better-quality public health … services than at present but at no higher cost; and to reduce the underlying growth rate of public health-care spending over …