Long waiting lines are a common feature and a major concern in many public health care delivery systems. The waiting lines are often characterized as inefficient, because they are a burden to patients without generating any gains for providers. There is an ongoing debate in Germany regarding the...

Deductibles in health insurance are often regarded as a means to contain health care costs when individuals exhibit moral hazard. However, in the absence of moral hazard, voluntarily chosen deductibles may instead lead to self-selection into different insurance contracts. We use a set of new...

This paper shows that patients with private health insurance (PHI) are being offered significantly shorter waiting times than patients with statutory health insurance (SHI) in German acute hospital care. This behavior may be driven by the higher expected profitability of PHI relative to SHI...

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...

Many health economists demand more competition in the health care system. They focus on the competition between sickness funds for insured and the competition between health care providers for contracts with sickness funds. But they neglect the competition between health care providers for...

During the next decades the populations of most developed countries will grow older as a result of the low level of birth rates since the 1970s and/or the continuously increasing life expectancy. We show within a Generational Accounting framework how unsustainable the public finances of France,...

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...

Das Gesetz zur Reform des Risikostrukturausgleichs in der Gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung aus dem Jahr 2001 umfasste zwei kurzfristige Maßnahmen, um den Risikostrukturausgleich stärker zu fokussieren: Der "Risikopool" als solidarische Finanzierung besonders aufwändiger Leistungsfälle und...