This paper considers the influence of patients' characteristics on their evaluation of a health system's responsiveness, that is, a system's ability to respond to the legitimate expectations of potential users regarding non-health enhancing aspects of care (Valentine et al. 2003a). Since...

The effect of face masks on Covid-19 transmission is crucial for the health of populations. The effectiveness of face masks in reducing the transmission of Covid-19 varies across primary evidence. To perform a quantitative meta-analysis, we collected 258 estimates from 44 primary studies...

Die Gesundheitssysteme stehen weltweit zur Diskussion. Kann internationales Benchmarking ganzer Gesundheitssysteme dazu beitragen, Lösungen für deren Probleme zu finden? Diese Arbeit stellt drei aktuelle Ansätze solcher Vergleiche vor. Hierbei werden die Erkenntnisse ebenso erläutert wie die...

As COVID-19 struck the United States in March 2020, sending the nation into lockdown, worry about the fate of private schools was high. These schools, which only survive if people can pay for them, seemed to face deep trouble. Many private schools have thin financial margins even in good...

In a sign of their increasing frustration with global efforts to ensure that all people everywhere will have access to COVID-19 vaccines, several developing countries have asked other members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) to join them in a sweeping waiver of the intellectual property...

This paper analyses the Slovak health insurance system and the policy challenges it faces. It describes the structure of health coverage and health sector reforms being implemented by the Slovak government. It provides a preliminary assessment of the possible impact of such reforms, with a focus...

While France has a universal public health insurance system, the coverage it provides is incomplete and the vast majority the French population has private complementary health insurance. Among OECD countries, the share of health care financed by private insurance is third highest behind the US...

This study updates and extends a previous study on equity in physician utilisation for a subset of the countries analyzed here (Van Doorslaer, Koolman and Puffer, 2002). It updates results to 2000 for 13 countries and adds new results for eight countries: Australia, Finland, France, Hungary,...

This paper analyses the effects of hospital closures in Germany in the context of emergency medical care for patients with acute myocardial infarction or hemorrhagic stroke. Using a comprehensive inpatient care data, I evaluate the extent of the impact of hospital closures between 2006 and 2012...

Two federal judges now tell us that the federal health law's individual mandate is unconstitutional. Three others disagree, and soon we will start to hear from appellate courts. But what if we put the legal arguments aside for the moment and focus on the real question: what happens to health...