Health care usually represents a so called merit good, i.e. a good whose consumption should be promoted and given that in most cases it might be essential to restore health or to stop its decay, most countries have implemented a public health care system where care is supplied to anybody needing...

This research examines the impact of Medicaid-Medicare dual eligibility on the pattern of health care service utilization by ethnic minorities. The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey 1996-2000 reveals that, as a whole, dual eligibility was strongly associated with high rate of home health provider...

Objectives: We estimated out-of-pocket health care spending and out-of-pocket spending burden ratio employing household equivalent income in the Republic of Korea. We examined variations in out-of-pocket spending, estimated out-of-pocket spending burden ratio employing household equivalent...

Consumers rarely know the price of medical care before they consume it. I use variation in the timing of access to a new source of price information to show how access to and search for price information leads consumers to pay significantly less for care. I provide suggestive evidence that...

Ontario healthcare reforms have made headway in improving access to primary care by implementing the "capitation" model where doctors are paid mainly for a roster of patients rather than fee-for-service – but too many of patients are still using "outside" doctors, according to a report from...

The health insurers administer retrospectively package rates for various inpatient procedures as a provider payment mechanism to empanelled hospitals in Indian healthcare market. This study analyzed the impact of private health insurance on healthcare utilization in terms of both lengths of...

For better or worse, President Obama's health care reform bill is now law. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act represents the most significant transformation of the American health care system since Medicare and Medicaid. It will fundamentally change nearly every aspect of health...

One of the reasons why regulators are hesitant about permitting price competition in healthcare markets is that it may damage quality when information is poor. Evidence on whether this fear is well-founded is scarce. We provide evidence using a reform that permitted Dutch health insurers and...

The traditional payment system between an insurer and providers does not incentivize providers to limit their prices nor patients to choose less expensive providers, hence contributing to high insurer expenditures. Reference pricing has been proposed as a way to better align incentives and...