Competition among health insurers is widely considered to be a means of enhancing efficiency and containing costs in the health care system. In this paper, it is argued that this could be unsuccessful since health care providers hold a strong position on the market for health care services....

Die demographische Entwicklung und der medizinisch-technische Fortschritt gelten als die beiden wichtigsten Gründe für den Anstieg der Gesundheitsausgaben. Der vorliegende Übersichtsartikel betrachtet den Einfluss der Alterung auf die Gesundheitsausgaben anhand der so genannten...

We study the effects of "balance billing", i.e., allowing physicians to charge a fee from patients in addition to the fee paid by Medicare. First, we show that on pure efficiency grounds the optimal Medicare fee under balance billing is zero. An active Medicare policy thus can only be justified...

The article deals with the issue of health care, focusing on expenditure allocated to it. The first part of the article reviews some selected European Union countries, analyzing their expenditure on their health care sectors. The second part brings an analysis of expenditure on health care in...