This paper examines the impact of coinsurance exemption for prescription medicines applied to elderly individuals in Spain after retirement. To evaluate this coinsurance change we use a rich administrative dataset that links pharmaceutical consumption and hospital discharge records for the full...

This thesis consists of a summary and four papers. The first two concerns health care and sickness absence, and the last two pharmaceutical costs and prices. <p> Paper [I] presents an economic federation model which resembles the situation in, for example, Sweden. In the model the state governments...</p>

In the county of Västerbotten, Sweden, there are two health centres which (contrary to all other health centres in the region) have a strict responsibility over their pharmaceutical budget. The purpose of this paper is to examine if the prices and quantities of pharmaceuticals prescribed by...

Several studies suggest that, on the basis of life expectancy (LE) regressions, new pharmaceutical drugs are responsible for some of the marked gains in LE observed over the last 50 years. We critically appraise these studies. We point out several modeling issues, including disentangling the...