This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexi- bility (Flex) Program on rural resident hospital choice and welfare. The Flex program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), which receives more generous reimbursement in return for...

This technical paper estimates the deductions on tax credits in Brazil for health care during 2003 and 2006. Subsidies for private health insurance are the focus of this study. It seems to be a contradiction between the redistribution model in the Constitution and the level of public spending on...

Im Großen und Ganzen sind die Sozialversicherungen zukunftsfähig aufgestellt; gleichwohl besteht weiterer Handlungsbedarf. Mit der Agenda 2010 und dem Wechsel von einem Defined Benefit- auf ein Defined Contribution-System hat die Regierung Schröder den ersten, mit der Schuldenregel, der Rente...

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...

This article examines the choice of health care in Japan by patients suffering from the common cold. Original data were obtained from a survey conducted by the authors. Empirical results show that the price elasticity of demand for medical services is between 0.23 and 0.36. This estimated price...

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...

Der Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung hat in seinem Jahresgutachten 2002/03 erstmals die beiden einnahmeseitigen Reformoptionen des Krankenversicherungssystems Bürgerversicherung und Gesundheitsprämien diskutiert (Sachverständigenrat, 2002, S. 282...

This paper analyses simultaneous regulation of cost and quality when firms have private, correlated information about productivity and the regulator receives a signal about quality. It is shown that managerial effort and expenditures on quality are positively correlated in the optimal contract....

The introduction of antibiotics as a medical treatment after World War II helped to dramatically increase life expectancy in the industrialized world. As a consequence of over-prescription the last decades ave however seen a sharp increase in prevalence of multi-resistant bacteria, disarming...

We investigate the welfare impact of parallel imports using a large panel data set containing monthly information on sales, ex-factory prices, and further product characteristics for all 700 anti-diabetic drugs sold in Germany between 2004 and 2010. We estimate a two-stage nested logit model of...