This paper studies the factors that determine the choice of either pri-vate (ISAPRES) or public (FONASA) health insurance in Chile, by those man-dated by law to purchase health insurance (i.e. dependant workers and retirees). Earnings are generally consid

A formal model of the Chilean dual health system is presented, which, for appropriate parameters, replicates the observed age segmentation of the population between the private insurance market and the public health insurance. The model is used to compare the level of welfare obtained in the...

Most Americans are now in some form of managed care plan that restricts access to services in order to reduce costs. It is difficult to determine whether these restrictions affect health because individuals and firms self-select into managed care. We investigate the effect of managed care using...

Of the ten million uninsured children in 1996, nearly half were eligible for public health insurance (Medicaid) but not enrolled. In response, policy efforts to reduce the uninsured have shifted from expanding Medicaid eligibility to increasing take-up among those eligible. However, little is...

Colombia adopted a health care system with regulated competition in the interaction of several markets: insurance, medical services, hospitalization and drugs. In this regulatory scheme, a collegiate body and two central dependencies of the executive branch intervene. Overall, the regulation...

Sickness benefit income reduces an employee's opportunity costs of absence from work. In the Federal Republic of Germany the institutional arrangement was changed several times in the 1951–1998 period. The paper investigates the effects on absence behavior. According to the empirical...

We study adult economic and health outcomes in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration, a randomized housing mobility experiment in which families living in high-poverty U.S. public housing projects in five cities were given vouchers to help them move to private housing units in...

The war on terrorism and the threat of chemical and biological weapons have brought a new urgency to already complex moral and bioethical questions. In the Wake of Terror presents thought-provoking essays on many of the troubling issues facing American society, written by experts from the fields...

This paper examines costs in the Swiss nursing home industry, an issue of concern to Swiss policy makers because of the explosion of elderly care costs and the aging of the population. The paper considers estimation of a translog cost function employing panel data for a sample of 36 nonprofit...

This brief paper explores the likely effects of government-imposed global budget caps, such as those in the Clinton administration proposal, on health care spending. It argues that health reform proposals that guarantee universal access to a basic package of medical benefits create a substantial...