Social institutions face many challenges. The recent economic crisis has provided a stress test as it has left a legacy of high unemployment and high government debt in many countries. It also lowered potential output and thus the revenue base for social protection schemes. At the same time,...

The recent economic crisis has provided a stress test for the vulnerability of social institutions. This paper assesses the vulnerability of social institutions in light of the current crisis, and surveys past episodes, when social institutions faced similar challenges. Public pay-as-you-go...

This article investigates the impact on the U.S. economy of making health care more affordable. We compare health care cost reductions with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) using a rich life cycle general equilibrium model with heterogeneous agents. We evaluate a wide range...

Despite promises that Medicare would not interfere with patients' ability to choose their physician and to purchase additional health coverage on the open market, over the decades Medicare rules and regulations have gradually eroded senior citizens' ability to control their healthcare choices....

The planning practice of health care capacities suffers from sectoral and regional constraints and it remains difficult to ensure an equal access for patients. Moreover, standard planning approaches lack the choice-theoretic grounding necessary for making reliable predictions of the demand and...

This study attempted to evaluate the working of the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS) and Ex-servicemen Contributory Health Scheme (ECHS) by assessing patient satisfaction as well as the issues and concerns of empaneled private healthcare providers. The study is based on a primary survey...

Medicare Part B pays physicians through a fixed fee schedule designed loosely as a system of average-cost reimbursement. This paper examines four difficulties faced by systems of this kind. First, Medicare's payment model would be improved if it accounted for the medical value and...

Although President Obama and the Democratic Congress were able to pass landmark health legislation, their efforts to reform health care ran into predictable political roadblocks. In a severe recession, taxing business and labor is obviously not helpful to economic recovery. Moreover, an array of...

Healthcare systems differ greatly across the world, however, it appears that the extent of public insurance (publicly/government funded healthcare) is the only institutional characteristic that plays a significant role in accounting for the large disparities in total healthcare spending. Other...