In a recent article which appeared in this journal, Hoel and Saeter propose a model showing that welfare may be improved by introducing delay in public health care. In this note we argue that their model may be used as starting point because of their stringent assumptions. We suggest that the...

In this model we use delay as a tool to improve income redistribution. Delay makes people with the highest opportunity cost of waiting leave the public health care market. If these, as we assume, are the ones at the higher end of the income distribution, they are made to pay twice for health...

A number of health care systems use waiting time as a rationing device for access to inpatient care. However, a considerable amount of research has focussed in particular on the UK's National Health Service and its perceived problem of waiting “lists”. In this chapter a theoretical...