Background: Traditionally in Germany all new drugs were automatically reimbursed by Social Health Insurance. This practice is seen increasingly critically. A new public institute was founded to examine the benefits of new medicines. The peoples' views on the benefits of new drugs and on which...

The main objective of risk adjustment in systems of regulated competition on health insurance markets is the removal of incentives for undesirable risk selection. We introduce a simple conceptual framework to clarify how the definition of acceptable costs and the distinction between legitimate...

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

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...

Remuneration rates of German nursing homes are prospectively negotiated between long-term care insurance (LTCI) and social assistance on the one side and nursing homes on the other. They diff er considerably across regions while there is no evidence for substantial differences in care provision....

The main objective of risk adjustment in systems of regulated competition on health insurance markets is the removal of incentives for undesirable risk selection. We introduce a simple conceptual framework to clarify how the definition of "acceptable costs" and the distinction between legitimate...

Im Herbst soll im Bundestag eine Reform der GKV verabschiedet werden und zum 1. Januar 2011 in Kraft treten. Philipp Rösler, Bundesgesundheitsminister, unterstreicht, dass die Reform den Einstieg in den Systemwechsel bedeutet: Denn mit der Festschreibung des prozentualen Beitragssatzes und der...