We estimate a bargaining model of competition between hospitals and managed care organizations (MCOs) and use the estimates to evaluate the effects of hospital mergers. We find that MCO bargaining restrains hospital prices significantly. The model demonstrates the potential impact of coinsurance...

In this paper, we explore the effects of primary care physician (PCP) practice competition on five distinct quality metrics directly tied to screening, follow-up care, and prescribing behavior under Medicare Part B. Controlling for physician, practice, and area characteristics as well as zip...

Classical analysis of health insurance markets often focuses on adverse selection, which creates a direct externality between the enrollees of the same health plan: under an imperfect risk adjustment, the higher the risks of my co-enrollees, the higher my cost of insurance. This has lead to the...

This chapter summarizes the many aspects of public policy for health care. I first consider government policy affecting individual behaviors. Government intervention to change individual actions such as smoking and drinking is frequently justified on externality grounds. External costs of...

The major German health care reforms undertaken since the late 1990s resulted in the adoption of selective contracting mechanisms in a formerly sectorally separated health care system. These reforms marked the launch of managed care in Germany that is expected to yield both a higher quality of...

Als Folge der jüngsten gesundheitspolitischen Reformen in Deutschland scheint ein Wandel in der HIV-Versorgungsstruktur unumgänglich. Vor diesem Hintergrund widmeten sich im November 2008 unterschiedliche Interessenvertreter in einem Workshop der Identifikation und Diskussion zukünftiger...

This paper applies the five modified standard criteria generally used in economics for assessing system performances to gauge the contribution of Managed Care to the performance of three health care systems, viz. Germany, the Netherlands and the United States. The maximum contribution of Managed...

In mixed health care systems a crucial condition for the success of Managed Care (MC) plans is to win over a su±cient number of general practitioners (GPs) acting as gatekeepers. This contribution reports on GPs' willingness-to-accept (WTA) or compensation asked, respectively, for changing from...

Important differences in labor market characteristics suggest that men and women physicians may be viewed as imperfect substitutes in the labor market. Concerns about efficiency and cost-cutting, which have led to the adoption of managed care practices, may have (unintentionally) favored female...