Background. Allostatic load reflects cumulative exposure to stressors throughout lifetime and has been associated with several adverse health outcomes. It is hypothesized that people with low socioeconomic status (SES) are exposed to higher chronic stress and have therefore greater levels of...

In some countries, including France, patients can choose between consulting a physician working in the regulated sector where, in general, fees are fully covered by health insurance (whether public, private or mixed), or a physician working in the unregulated sector, where a balance billing...

The French market for specialist physician care has a dual legal structure: physicians must exclusively work in sector 1 and charge regulated fees or in sector 2, where they can freely set their fees. Patient out-of-pocket payments in sector 2 are partially covered by private insurance. The...

This paper reports the results from a multi-attribute market negotiation experiment to study how the structure of the negotiation process influences its efficiency. We found that, conditional on the success of the negotiation, the total value created increased with the time spent negotiating; by...

According to the catastrophic health expenditure methodology a household is in catastrophe if its health out-of-pocket budget share exceeds a critical threshold. We develop a conceptual framework for addressing three questions in relation to this methodology, namely: 1. Can a budget share be...