Industrialised countries face similar challenges for improving the performance of their health system. Nevertheless the nature and intensity of the reforms required are largely determined by each country's basic social security model. This paper looks at the main differences in performance of...

The aim of this paper is to compare the evolution of antidepressant consumption in France, Germany and the United Kingdom between 1998 and 2002. Commercial databases (IMS Health) have been used in conjunction with administrative data (PACT for the UK, GKV for Germany and Afssaps for France) to...

Observation of socioeconomic statistics between different neighbourhoods highlights significant differences for economic indicators, social indicators and health indicators. The issue faced here is determining the origins of health inequalities: individual effects and neighbourhood effects....

In France, drug prices have historically been regulated but approaches to setting and regulating prices have been evolving in recent years. In 2003, the prices of new outpatient drugs, which had hitherto been entirely regulated, were semi-liberalised, with drug companies setting prices in line...

We study the psychosocial determinants of self-assessed health in order to explain social inequalities in health in France. We use a unique general population survey to assess the respective impact on self-assessed health status of subjective perceptions of social capital, social support, and...

This study aims to analyse the impact of the measurement of health status on socioeconomic inequalities in health. A MIMIC model with structural equations is used to create a latent variable of health status from four health indicators: self-assessed health, report of chronic diseases, report of...

Study objective: Since January 2005 France is exploring a new scheme termed "preferred doctor" (médecin traitant) which can be considered as an innovative version of Gate Keeping in order to reduce the excess of postulated excess in health consumption, more especially access to specialist care....

This paper examines the demand for complementary health insurance (CHI) in the non-group market in France and the reasons why the near poor seem price insensitive. First we develop a theoretical model based on a simple tradeoff between two goods: CHI and a composite good reflecting all other...