This paper analyzes the impact of population aging on health care expenditures in Korea. Examination of the age-expenditure profile reveals that health care resources are allocated more for the older cohort of population over time, suggesting significant growth of health care expenditures due to population aging. We contend, however, that population aging is considered as a parameter rather tha...

In hospital merger cases, the courts have often based geographic market areas on patient flow criteria. Given patient heterogeneity and the importance of distance to hospital and health plan restrictions on hospital choice, Capps et al. (2003a) show that potential market power effects can be understated. While willingness-to-pay(WTP) measures derived from individual choice models provide an alt...

The impact of private finance on publicly funded health care systems depends on how the relationship between public and private finance is structured. This essay first reviews the experience in five nations that exemplify different ways of drawing the public/private boundary to address the particular questions raised by each model. This review is then used to interpret aggregate empirical analy...

This review article compares ambulatory and hospital-based quality improvement methods in Israel. Data were collected from: reports of the National Program for Quality Indicators in community, the National Program for Quality Indicators in Hospitals, and from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Reviews of Health Care Quality.

The instrumental use of social networks has become a central tenet of international health policy and advocacy since the Millennium project. In asking, ‘How to facilitate social contagion?’, Karl Blanchet of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine therefore reflects not only on the recent success, but also hints to growing challenges; the tactics of partnerships, alliances and platfo...

Data comparing health expenditures in twenty-four industrialized nations show that the United States continues to lead the world in health spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. In 1991 the United States spent $2,868 per person on health care, compared with an average of $1,305 in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries. The U.S. figure exceeds spendi...

Many of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries use global budgeting to control all or certain portions of their health care expenditures. Although the use of global budgets as a cost-containment tool has not been implemented in the United States in any comprehensive way, recent health care reform initiatives have increased the need for research into such tools. In g...