Many countries with national health care providers and health insurances regulate the market for pharmaceuticals to steer drug demand and to control expenses. For example, they introduce reference pricing or tiered co-payments to enhance drug substitution and competition. Since 2006, Germany...

The introduction of hospital reimbursement based on diagnosis related groups (DRG) in 2004 has been a conspicuous attempt to increase hospital efficiency in the German health sector. In this paper changes of hospital efficiency, quantified as a Malmquist index decomposition in pure technical...

Social protection systems in developing countries are typically composed of a bundle of benefits, the major ones being health insurance and pensions. Benefit bundling may increase informality and decrease welfare. Indeed, if some of the benefits are valued at substantially less than their cost,...

Using SOEP panel data and difference-in-differences methods, this study is the first to empirically evaluate the effectiveness of four different health care cost containment measures within an integrated framework. The four measures investigated were introduced in Germany in 1997 to reduce moral...

The pharmacy sector in many European countries continues to be subject to strict governmental regulations. This consists - depending on the country - of regulations on ownership, business operations, opening hours, personnel, pricing, prohibiting certain sales methods (e.g. mail order), and...

In 2010 the Greek economy entered a deep economic crisis. This was the result of an accumulation of structural problems in the economy, including overspending and loss of competitiveness during the previous decades, translating into persistently large budget and trade deficits. In 2015, under...

This paper reports on a re-evaluation of the German health care reform of 1997. A previous evaluation found a limited effect of a 4.4 percent reduction of the number of doctor visits in a sample of pharmacy customers. The re-evaluation based on a representative household survey, the German...

This paper analyzes the potential unintended consequences and incentive effects of the Affordable Care Act's minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) regulations, which are designed to guarantee that a specific percentage of health insurance premiums are spent on medical care and activities that improve...

This article provides an analysis and critique of tax penalties affecting employers and individuals in the Affordable Care Act. After an overview of the Act and its intended role in addressing problems in the health insurance system, the article turns to examine the employer and individual...

In the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic, the mortality risk being presented by both the media and some public health information providers is often misleading and so increasing the risk of suboptimal policy decisions and lower than desired voluntary compliance rates. We make the following...