One of the reasons why regulators are hesitant about permitting price competition in healthcare markets is that it may damage quality when information is poor. Evidence on whether this fear is well-founded is scarce. We provide evidence using a reform that permitted Dutch health insurers and...

One of the reasons why regulators are hesitant about permitting price competition in healthcare markets is that it may damage quality when information is poor. Evidence on whether this fear is well-founded is scarce. We provide evidence using a reform that permitted Dutch health insurers and...

U.S. Prison health care has recently been in the news and in the courts. A particular issue is whether prisons should contract out for health care. Contracting out has been growing over the past few decadest. The stated motivation for this change ranges from a desire to improve the prison health...

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...

In Scandinavia, the provision of health care services has been, almost entirely, the responsibility of the public health care system. However, in the last five to seven years there has been remarkable growth in the private health care market. These health care services are obtained normally...

We investigate the effect of reputational motivation on output in a scenario of overprovision of medical treatment. We assume that physicians differ in their degree of altruism, enjoy being perceived as good but dislike being perceived as greedy. We show that better reputational motivation...

The last 40 years have seen a rapid increase of government expenditures on public welfare arrangements. Increasing healthcare expenditures form a significant part of these outlays, and its share of total government expenditure has risen rapidly. This paper argues that the determinants of growth...

The share of privately paid medical care is steadily increasing. Polish patients pay immediately for single services and may also privately conclude the contracts for medical insurance or subscription (steady access to complex private medical care). The aim of this paper is to draw the reader's...

I investigate how changes in fees paid to Medicaid physicians affect take-up among children in low-income families. The existing literature suggests that the low level of Medicaid fee payments to physicians reduces their willingness to see Medicaid patients, thus creating an access-to-care...

In this paper, I examine the impact of uninsured patients on the health of the insured, focusing on one health outcome - the in-hospital mortality rate of insured heart attack patients. I employ panel data models using patient discharge and hospital financial data from California (1999-2006). My...