This paper explores variations in the uptake of breast cancer screening and associated factors influencing utilisation of mammography screening among women aged 50 to 69 years in 13 European countries. We focus on the relative importance of individual (e.g. age, education, etc.) and...

The objective of this paper is to identify selected forces of the decrease in the number of avoidable deaths from ischaemic heart diseases (IHD) inWest and East Germany from 1996 to 2004. Our main result reveals that the number of intracardiac catheter facilities,which are an important...

This paper shows that patients with private health insurance (PHI) are being offered significantly shorter waiting times than patients with statutory health insurance (SHI) in German acute hospital care. This behavior may be driven by the higher expected profitability of PHI relative to SHI...

Obesity may not only be linked to undesirable health outcomes but also to limitations in sexual life. The present paper aims to assess whether there is a causal relationship between weight loss and sexual activity in adult obese individuals. To address the endogeneity of weight loss that is...

Medical providers often have a significant influence on treatment decisions which they can use in their own financial interest. Classical models of supplier-induced demand predict that medical providers will supply fewer services if they face increasing prices. We test this prediction based on a...

This paper presents the first cross-country estimation of needs-adjusted income and education-related inequalities in the use of a whole set of preventive care treatments. Analysis is based on the first three waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement (SHARE) for individuals aged 50...

Medical technological progress has been shown to be the main driver of health care costs. A key policy question is whether new treatment options are worth the additional costs. In this paper we assess the causal effect of percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA), a major new heart...

To equalize differences in health plan premiums due to differences in risk pools, the German legislature introduced a simple Risk Adjustment Scheme (RAS) based on age, gender and disability status in 1994. In addition, effective 1996, consumers gained the freedom to choose among hundreds of...

Long waiting lines are a common feature and a major concern in many public health care delivery systems. The waiting lines are often characterized as inefficient, because they are a burden to patients without generating any gains for providers. There is an ongoing debate in Germany regarding the...

Healthcare utilization varies widely between regions. Yet, the causes of regional variation are still not well understood, and they can also differ between countries and institutional settings. We exploit patient migration to examine which share of regional variation in ambulatory care use in...