Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) cause about 71% of all deaths globally and a considerable increase in health care costs. To tackle this problem, several Governments have designed "sin taxes", i.e, extra payments related to the quantity of unhealthy contents of specific goods. However, unhealthy...

The paper studies the incentive for providers to invest in new health care technologies under alternative payment systems, when the patients' benefits are uncertain. If the reimbursement by the purchaser includes both a variable (per patient) and a lump-sum component, efficiency can be ensured...

Patient mobility is a key issue in the EU who recently passed a new law on patients' right to EU-wide provider choice. In this paper we use a Hotelling model with two regions that differ in technology to study the impact of patient mobility on health care quality, health care financing and...

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) cause about 71% of all deaths globally and a considerable increase in health care costs. To tackle this problem, several Governments have designed "sin taxes", i.e, extra payments related to the quantity of unhealthy contents of specific goods. However, unhealthy...

In this paper we use a simple theoretical model to compare alternative regulation regimes for the reimbursement of medical innovations when responses to a new treatment (effectiveness) are heterogeneous within the eligible population. We study two dimensions: i) efficiency in selecting...

In some countries the reform of public health care provision has been accompanied by a parallel process of devolution that has also entailed the organisation of health care becoming a regional competence. However, the application of fiscal federalism in the context of the provision of health...

Cream skimming is an illegal behaviour that consists in choosing to treat patients according to their ability to recover. It arises from the use of prospective payment schemes in an asymmetry of information framework. In this context in fact the provider can observe some relevant information...

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...

The use of prospective payment system in health care has mixed evidences as concerns its effectiveness. On the one side it avoid the problem of misreporting cost, but has the downside effect that, if hospitals might choose which patients to treat, competition might become unfair and the whole...

Quantity rationing is widely used by the traditional literature on public health care expenditure determination as a means to justify the coexistence of the private health care sector. However, this artefact is not suitable for a wide range of health care services that have an "all or nothing"...