In 1996 free choice of health insurers has been introduced in the German social health insurance scheme. Competition between insurers was supposed to increase efficiency. A crucial precondition for effective competition among health insurers is that consumers search for lower-priced health...

If health care expenditure for the elderly grows faster than for younger people, the expenditure profiles become steeperʺ we call that "steepingʺ. Three instruments for measuring steepingʺ are presented: (1) trend of the relation between per-capita-expenditure of the old and the young; (2)...