IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-540-68540-1_11.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Forms of Delivery of Medical Care

In: Health Economics

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Zweifel

    (University of Zurich)

  • Friedrich Breyer

    (University of Konstanz)

  • Mathias Kifmann

    (University of Augsburg)

Abstract

Forms of delivery of medical care differ considerably between countries. These differences ultimately reflect basic differences of philosophy.Where the state grants the citizen a right to health, government tends to be directly responsible for the provision of health care services. Examples include the former eastern bloc countries as well as the United Kingdom and Italy with their National Health Services. Conversely, in the United States it is the individuals themselves who in principle assume responsibility for their health. Nonetheless, the public purse finances 40 percent of total U.S. health care expenditure (HCE), supports public hospitals, and acts directly as a health insurer through the programs Medicare (for pensioners) and Medicaid (for the poor). While there is no National Health Service in Canada, the country has a national health insurance scheme. In the Netherlands, more than 30 percent of the population were members of a private health insurance scheme before the 2006 reform. Since then, formerly public and private health insurers compete for consumers side by side. Swedish hospitals, financed by district health authorities, play a key role in the provision of medical care.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Zweifel & Friedrich Breyer & Mathias Kifmann, 2009. "Forms of Delivery of Medical Care," Springer Books, in: Health Economics, chapter 11, pages 379-400, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-68540-1_11
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-68540-1_11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-540-68540-1_11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.