This commentary explores some of the issues raised by Gilbert et al.short communication, Morality and Markets in the NHS. The increasing role of market mechanisms and the changing types of healthcare providers together with the use of choice and competition to drive improvements in quality in the National Health Service (NHS), all have important ethical implications. In order for the NHS to con...

Background As middle-income countries become more affluent, economically sophisticated and productive, health expenditure patterns are likely to change. Other socio-demographic and political changes that accompany rapid economic growth are also likely to influence health spending and financial protection.   Methods This study investigates the relationship between growth on per-capita healthcare...

We introduce a novel conditional e-cash protocol allowing future anonymous cashing of bank-issued e-money only upon the satisfaction of an agreed-upon public condition. Payers are able to remunerate payees for services that depend on future, yet to be determined outcomes of events. Once payment complete, any double-spending attempt by the payer will reveal its identity; no double-spending by th...

Because the health sector makes up a large share of the U.S. economy, widespread price changes for medical services can impact overall inflation significantly. Cuts to public healthcare spending spill over directly and indirectly to private spending. A recent estimate suggests the full effect of the Medicare payment cuts from the 2011 Budget Control Act resulted in a decline of 0.24 percentage ...

Why have patterns of healthcare spending varied during the Great Recession? Using cross-national, harmonised data for 27 EU countries from 1995 to 2011, we evaluated political, economic, and health system determinants of recent changes to healthcare expenditure. Data from EuroStat, the IMF, and World Bank (2013 editions) were evaluated using multivariate random- and fixed-effects models, correc...