Unbiased Analysis of Today's Healthcare Issues
Yesterday I noted that competition is key to driving down prices in health insurance markets. Competition is about expanding the number of suppliers available for a given product. Now let’s think about the demand side. Does reducing the number of purchasers increase or decrease price? One could think that price would fall because buyers would…
The Dartmouth Atlas is well known for examining regional variation in practice patterns in the U.S. It looks like researchers in France are taking a similar approach to evaluate their own single payer system. A paper by Mercier, Georgescu and Bousquet (2015) find: We assessed disparities in potentially avoidable hospitalizations in France in 2012 and…
“European healthcare systems…are always presented [in the media] as public sector nirvanas. The Guardian in the UK, for instance, can write po-faced articles praising the French system without acknowledging, for a single moment, that private-for-profit hospitals make up a larger percentage of sales in France than they do in the USA. Or that home care…
A recent paper by Hai Zhong (2011) finds that health insurance that provides immediate reimbursement for health care services significantly increases the likelihood of patients seeking outpatient treatment in China compared to reimbursement beneficiaries with a delay. China isn’t the only country where insurance companies provide delayed reimbursement. In fact, in France patients pay the full cost…
Here is my previous review of the French healthcare system. Below is the some additional information on medical care in France based on the book by William Roth. Physicians: Physicians generally work out of their own practices rather than in health centers. Physicians choose whether to work in the private sector or public sector. They…
As mentioned in previous posts, most health insurance in the France public health care system involves significant copayments. While this helps to reduce the moral hazard problem, it may prevent poor individuals from utilizing the care they need. In 2000, France introduced free complementary health insurance plan which covers most out-of-pocket payments for the poorest…
France is often seen by liberals as the ideal system. It has universal health care, with few waiting lists. France has the highest level of satisfaction with their health care among all European countries. How can this be? What is their secret? France provides a basic, universal health insurances through large occupation-based funds. The General…