Healthcare in the United States is the most expensive in the world, with real per capita spending growth averaging 4 percent since 1980. This paper examines the role of market power of U.S. healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies. It finds that markups (the ability to charge prices...

We study how the threat of entry affects service quantity and quality of general practitioners (GPs). We leverage Germany's needs-based primary care planning system, in which the likelihood of new GPs reduces by 20 percentage points when primary care coverage exceeds a cut-off. We compile novel...

We study the relationship between market size and a number of firms in several healthcare professions in Slovakia to provide a new evidence about their entry decisions and a toughness of competition in the market. The size of a local market to support the entry of the first general practitioner...

The Healthcare Openness and Access Project (HOAP) is a collection of state-by-state comparative data on the flexibility and discretion that US patients and providers have in seeking and delivering healthcare. HOAP combines these data to produce 41 indicators of openness and accessibility. In...

This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

In promoting health care reform in 2009, President Obama stated, “when it comes to health care spending, we are on an unsustainable course that threatens the financial stability of families, businesses and government itself.” We are still on that “unsustainable course” thirteen years...

We present results from a nationally representative survey of American adults, guided by a simple theoretical model expressing health care-seeking behavior as a function of economic and behavioral fundamentals and highlighting the role of trust. We report several findings. First, we document a...

The high cost of capital for firms conducting medical research and development (R&D) has been partly attributed to the government risk facing investors in medical innovation. This risk slows down medical innovation because investors must be compensated for it. We propose new and simple financial...

Now before Congress there are at least two healthcare1 bills, generally referred to as Medicare for All. Basically, these bills would, in various ways, use the structure of the existing Medicare system to provide insurance benefits to the broad class of citizens. It is often stated that bills...