In Medicare Part D, low income individuals receive subsidies to enroll into insurance plans. This paper studies how premiums are distorted by the combined effects of this subsidy and the default assignment of low income enrollees into plans. Removing this distortion could reduce the cost of the...

Despite the rapidly aging population, relatively little is known about how cost sharing affects the elderly's medical spending. Exploiting longitudinal claims data and the drastic reduction of coinsurance from 30% to 10% at age 70 in Japan, we find that the elderly's demand responses are...

Background: Pharmaceutical expenditure grow strongly in most health care systems. Especially high prices of new drugs are perceived to be driver of growth which might threaten the sustainability of financing drugs. Objective: The study aims to analyse a) whether German health policies can...