Seit einigen Jahren wird in Deutschland über Veränderungen in der Finanzierungund im Leistungskatalog des Krankenversicherungssystems intensiv diskutiert. Dabeiwerden häufig problematische Anreizstrukturen im Hinblick auf das Verhaltender Versicherten genannt. Insbesondere haben Versicherte...

We investigate whether people enrolled into voluntary health insurance (VHI) substitute public consumption with private (opt out) or just enlarge their private consumption, without reducing reliance upon public provisions (top up). We study the case of Italy, where a mixed insurance system is in...

We consider an economy where most of the health care is publicly provided, and where there is waiting time for several types of treatments. Private health care without waiting time is an option for the patients in the public health queue. We show the effects of a tax (positive or negative) on...

New technological applications are usually expected to increase the health care costs. But they can also spawn cost savings in the long run, for example, when making time-consuming diagnostic methods more efficient and facilitating targeted therapy. This study analyses how the implementation of...

UK Local Authorities purchase care home places on behalf of a large group of people following a means test of their income and wealth. All other buyers of care home services are atomistic. The care home market is characterised by a large number of small providers. Local authorities may thus have...

Zentrales Element unseres Gesundheitssystems sind die Versicherten, die mit Ihren Beitragszahlungen einen großen Teil des Systems finanzieren und mit ihren individuellen Verhalten als Patient einen entschiedenen Teil der Dynamik dieses System innerhalb des politischen Rahmens und seiner...

Der Sachverständigenrat zur Begutachtung der gesamtwirtschaftlichen Entwicklung hat in seinem Jahresgutachten 2002/03 erstmals die beiden einnahmeseitigen Reformoptionen des Krankenversicherungssystems Bürgerversicherung und Gesundheitsprämien diskutiert (Sachverständigenrat, 2002, S. 282...

This paper exploits rich SOEP microdata to analyze state-level variation in health care utilization in Germany. Unlike most studies in the field of the Small Area Variation (SAV) literature, our approach allows us to net out a large array of individual-level and state-level factors that may...

Germany is one of the few OECD countries with a two-tier system of statutory and primary private health insurance. Both types of insurance provide fee-for-service insurance, but chargeable fees for identical services are more than twice as large for privately insured patients than for...

We study the competitive effects of restricting direct access to secondary care by gatekeeping, focusing on the informational role of general practitioners (GPs). In the secondary care market there are two hospitals choosing quality and specialisation. Patients, who are ex ante uninformed, can...