Health spending per capita in England has more than doubled since 1997, yet relatively little is known about how that spending is distributed across the population. This paper uses administrative National Health Service (NHS) hospital records to examine key features of public hospital spending...

This article provides an analysis of policies adopted to ensure adequate funding to public health care in Brazil as determined by the 1988 Federal Constitution. Issues related to the tripartite funding of the SUS, the decentralization of federal financial resources to subnational levels of...

EQ-5D is used in cost-e ectiveness studies underlying many important health policy decisions. It comprises a survey instrument generating a description of health states across ve domains, and a system of utility values for each state. The original 3-level version of EQ-5D is being replaced with...

Using representative and geocoded data from the Swiss Household Panel (SHP) and the Swiss Business Census, we estimate the effect of sports activity on health. OLS models show that sports activity significantly decreases overweight, sleeping problems, headaches, back problems, and perceived...

Emergency departments are the front line of health care systems and play a critical role in ensuring an efficient and high-quality response for patients in stress or crisis situations. A growing demand for emergency care might however reduce patients’ satisfaction (through waiting times),...

This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

In the United States, many young adults do not have full-year health insurance. However, insurance coverage increases as young adults mature, obtain education, and work experience. Previous empirical work has not determined whether the increase in insurance coverage associated with age is caused...

I investigate the contribution of pharmaceutical innovation to recent longevity growth in Germany and France. First, I examine the effect of the vintage of prescription drugs (and other variables) on the life expectancy and age-adjusted mortality rates of residents of Germany, using...

According to Baumol (1993) health care epitomises Baumol's cost disease. Sectors that suffer from Baumol's cost disease are characterised by slow productivity growth due to a high labour coefficient. As a result, unit costs of these sectors rise inexorably if the respective wages increase with...

Although a substantial literature examines the relationship between culture and health in myriad individual contexts, a lack of comparative data across settings has resulted in disparate and imprecise conceptualizations of the concept for scholars and practitioners alike. This article examines...