Background. Allostatic load reflects cumulative exposure to stressors throughout lifetime and has been associated with several adverse health outcomes. It is hypothesized that people with low socioeconomic status (SES) are exposed to higher chronic stress and have therefore greater levels of...

Many countries have introduced competition in health insurance markets. Managed competition settings have been implemented in order to avoid risk selection problems. In Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Israel citizens can choose between different providers for basic coverage. In this...

In this paper we investigate the possible presence of switching costs when consumers are offered the opportunity to change their basic health insurance provider. We focus on the specific case of Switzerland which implemented a pure form of competition in basic health insurance markets. We...