Within the debate about the rise of costs in the German health system, the argument has put forth that patients' excessive demand for benefits is caused by the existence of a moral hazard problem. One way of influencing an insured person's consumer behaviour is the introduction of several...

In the very recent past, the Lombardy health care system – established in 1997 on the quasi market model – has caught the interest of researchers and politicians in different OECD countries11See for example the Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, April 13, 2010, R2.. Its merits, compared to other...