This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

Nova Scotia faces a $89 billion fiscal burden – the future tax bill for increased healthcare costs over the next half-century – and should prepare now for the coming demographic squeeze, says a report released today from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Delivering Healthcare to an Aging...

OECD countries have used a variety of mechanisms for subsidizing healthcare for more than a century. This paper demonstrates that an electoral model of healthcare policies can explain why various combinations of healthcare programs have been adopted and why they are modified through time. The...

Towards a sustainable health system: A call to action' speaks to the challenge that the climate crisis poses for health systems. The scale of the accelerating crisis will require that health systems adapt in response, but also that they become visible champions for change, mitigating the...

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...

OECD countries have used a variety of mechanisms for subsidizing healthcare for more than a century. These include tax preferences, direct subsidies, mandated health insurance programs, government-financed single-payer systems, and direct provision of healthcare services. In most cases,...

Background: In the day surgery system are intertwined elements of state health policy, health care payers' interests, employers of health care system, as well as the interests and wishes of patients. A problem in the health policy is to find a way to regulate ambulatory and short-term surgical...

Purpose This study investigates the impact of political alignment on intergovernmental transfers to the Brazilian unified health system (SUS). The authors analyzed both automatic transfers based on pre-established rules and discretionary transfers, using two criteria of political alignment...

Spatial inequalities in publicly provided goods such as health care facilities have substantial socioeconomic effects. Little is known, however, as to why publicly provided goods diverge among urban and rural regions. We exploit narrow parliamentary majorities in German states between 1950 and...

Background: Digital health interventions (DHI) have been identified as a tool that has the potential to meet the growing demand for healthcare, improve the efficiency and sustainability of healthcare, and increase the accessibility and quality of care. The adoption and use of DHI for healthcare...