This paper analyses possible options how to improve the risk adjustment of the health insurance system in the Czech Republic. Out of possible options it argues for including Pharmaceutical Cost Groups (PCGs) as additional risk factors since it is an improvement that can be implemented almost...

This paper considers the role of ownership form for the financial performance of German acute care hospitals and its development over time. We measure financial performance by a hospital-specific yearly probability of default (PD). Using a panel of hospital data, our models allow for state...

Primary care physicians have two roles: the healer and the gatekeeper. We show that, due to information asymmetries, they cannot be expected to fulfill the latter role. Better gatekeepers will be poorer healers; hence all patients, both truly sick and shirkers, will strictly prefer physicians...

We analyse the effect of competition on quality in hospital markets with regulated prices, considering both the effect of (i) introducing competition (monopoly versus competition) and (ii) increasing competition through lower transportation costs (increased substitutability) or a higher number...

A famous idea to maintain affordable health expenditures is to cut back statutory health insurance (SHI) to a basic insurance and to introduce supplementary private health insurance (PHI), permitted to cover the remaining benefits and to apply managed care mechanisms. The measure is supposed to...

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...

We analyze the impact of national pharmaceutical regulation on the launch delay of new chemical entities approved by the EMEA's centralized procedure. We find that direct price control regimes have a significantly negative impact on the launch timing. These results cannot be found when...

This paper investigates competition between health insurance companies under different financing regulations. We consider two alternatives advanced in recent German health care reform discussions: competition by contribution rates (health contributions) and by fees (health premia). We find that...

Competition among health insurers is widely considered to be a means of enhancing efficiency and containing costs in the health care system. In this paper, it is argued that this could be unsuccessful since health care providers hold a strong position on the market for health care services....

We analyze the effect of introducing a minimum mandatory health insurance plan in a segmented market in which high risks are affiliated to the public insurer and low risks to the private ones (market segmentation is endogenously obtained in our model). We assume both types of insurers must...