This study is the first to estimate the price elasticities of demand for both medical rehabilitation programs and treatment at health spas. In Germany, the Statutory Health Insurance (SHI) covers both forms of therapy if administered in authorized medical facilities on referral from a physician....

Geographic variation in healthcare utilization has raised concerns of possible inefficiencies in healthcare supply, as differences are often not reflected in health outcomes. Using comprehensive Norwegian microdata, we exploit cross-region migration to analyze regional variation in healthcare...

This paper investigates the fiscal pressure from demographic change in relation to the labour marketspace for fifty countries that cover 75% of the world population. The pressure-to-space indicator ranks Poland, Turkey and Greece high. Apart from Turkey and India, developing countries rank low...

When public long-term care (LTC) insurance is provided by insurers, they typically lack incentives for purchasing cost-effective LTC. Providing insurers with appropriate incentives for efficiency without jeopardizing access for high-risk individuals requires, among other things, an adequate...

Background: In the day surgery system are intertwined elements of state health policy, health care payers' interests, employers of health care system, as well as the interests and wishes of patients. A problem in the health policy is to find a way to regulate ambulatory and short-term surgical...

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...

Healthcare payers try to reduce costs by promoting the use of cheaper generic drugs. We show strong interrelations in drug prescriptions between the inpatient and outpatient sectors by using a large administrative dataset from Austria. Patients with prior hospital visits have a significantly...

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...

This paper analyses the dramatic spread of education and healthcare in Asia and also the large variations in that spread across and within countries over 50 years. Apart from differences in initial conditions and income levels, the nature of the state has also been an important determinant of...

How do patient and provider incentives affect mode and cost of long-term care? Our analysis of 1 million nursing home stays yields three main insights. First, Medicaid-covered residents prolong their stays instead of transitioning to community-based care due to limited cost-sharing. Second,...