The level and distribution of patient waiting times for elective treatments is a major concern in publicly-funded health care systems. Strict targets, which have specified maximum waiting times, have been introduced in the NHS over the last decade and have been criticized for distorting existing...

We estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) of individuals to have increased spatial access to hospitals using a spatial hedonic price model. Employing a dataset of over 90,000 detailed housing observations, we find that WTP of individuals to live one mile closer to a hospital is positive if the...

The same methodology Oecd and Ecofin apply to project future trends of health care expenditue is here applied to reconstruct backwards Italian health care expenditure. The time horizon is 1988-2012. Results are described and argued. Important evidence emerges on the historical value of the...

The Ecofin-Oecd methodology is applied to reconstruct the health care expenditure evolution in Italy and in the Region Emilia Romagna. The reconstructed series can be compared to the historical series, highlighting the different capabilities of the Italian average and of the Region Emilia...

Data from Stability Programs (European Countries) and from Us Congress Budget Office and Us Bureau of Census are collected to investigate the burden each worker will have to bear in the future in order to finance pension and health care provisions. If the private side of the system is based,...

This paper describes the reasons at the basis of the insufficiency of pay-as-you-go systems to provide resources for financing health care in an ageing society with the low rates of growth that will characterise western industrialised economies during next decades. Intuitive arguments are...

We examine the effect of publicly provided health care on welfare by combining local level data on public health care, and individual level data on life satisfaction. It is shown that relatively high expenditures in health care have a positive effect on individuals' life satisfaction in our...

India’s health care and health financing provision is characterized by too little Government spending on health, meager health insurance coverage, declining public health care use contrasted by highest levels of private out-of-pocket health spending in the world. To understand the...