Background: A uniform package of benefits and uniform cost sharing are elements of regulation inherent in most social health insurance systems. Both elements risk burdening the population with a welfare loss if preferences for risk and insurance attributes differ. This suggests the introduction...

This article evaluates three measures introduced by the Australian Federal Government in 1999 and 2000 that were designed to encourage private health insurance and relieve financial pressure on the public healthcare sector. These policy changes were (i) a 30% premium rebate, (ii) health insurers...

A nonparametric Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is performed on hospitals in the federal state of Saxony (Germany) and in Switzerland. This study is of interest from three points of view. First, contrary to most existing work, patient days are not treated as an output but as an input. Second,...

Recent healthcare reforms have sought to increase efficiency by introducing managed care (MC) as an alternative to conventional care. This article proposes an institutional change designed to let German consumers choose between the two settings through directing payments from the Federal Health...

This paper applies the five standard economic performance criteria to gauge the contribu-tion of Managed Care (MC) to the performance of three healthcare systems, viz. Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. The criteria are (1) matching of consumer preferences, (2) technical efficiency, (3)...

Recent healthcare reforms have sought to increase efficiency by introducing managed care (MC) while respecting consumer preferences by admitting choice between MC and conventional care. This article proposes an institutional change designed to let German consumers choose between the two settings...

This paper applies the five modified standard criteria generally used in economics for assessing system performances to gauge the contribution of Managed Care to the performance of three health care systems, viz. Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. The maximum contribution of Managed...

This study seeks to provide evidence for deciding whether or not a pharmaceutical innovation should be included in the benefit list of social health insurance. A discrete choice experiment (DCE) was conducted in Germany to measure preferences for modern insulin therapy. Of the 1,100 individuals...

Elements of regulation inherent in most social health insurance systems are a uniform package of benefits and uniform cost sharing. Both elements risk to burden the population with a welfare loss if preferences differ. This suggests introducing more contracted choice; however, it is widely...