Many politicians blame physician dispensing (PD) to increase health care expenditure and to undermine independence of drug prescription and income leading to a suboptimal medication. Therefore, PD is not allowed in most OECD countries. In Switzerland, PD is allowed in some regions depending on...

Microeconomic theory predicts that if patients are fully insured and providers are paid fee-for-service, utilization of medical services exceeds the efficient level (‘moral hazard effect’). In Switzerland, both demand-side and supply-side cost sharing have been introduced to mitigate this...

Policy makers around the world seek to encourage generic substitution. In this paper, the importance of prescribing physicians’ imperfect agency is tested using the fact that some Swiss jurisdictions allow physicians to dispense drugs on their own account (physician dispensing, PD) while...

Many politicians blame physician dispensing (PD) to increase health care expenditure and to undermine independence of drug prescription and income leading to a suboptimal medication. Therefore, PD is not allowed in most OECD countries. In Switzerland, PD is allowed in some regions depending on...

This paper seeks to create new insights when judging the impact different risk adjustment schemes may have on the incentive to select risks. It distinguishes risk types with high and low profit potential and estimates long-run profits associated with risk selection in four scenarios (no risk...

Many politicians blame physician dispensing (PD) to increase health care expenditure and to undermine independence of drug prescription and income leading to a suboptimal medication. Therefore, PD is not allowed in most OECD countries. In Switzerland, PD is allowed in some regions depending on...