Rationing of health care: is there an economic rationality to it?

详细信息    查看全文

• 作者：Peter Zweifel
• 刊名：The European Journal of Health Economics
• 出版年：2015
• 出版时间：November 2015
• 年：2015
• 卷：16
• 期：8
• 页码：797-800
• 全文大小：414 KB
• 参考文献：1.Binstock, R.H.: Aged-based rationing of health care. In: Encyclopedia of aging (2002) (website)
  2.Binstock, R.H.: Healthcare costs around the world: is aging a fiscal ‘black hole- Generations 27(4), 37-2 (1993)
  3.Breyer, F.: Implicit versus explicit rationing of health services. CESIfo DICE Rep 11(1), 7-5 (2013)
  4.Callahan, D.: Setting limits: medical goals in an aging society. Simon & Schuster, New York (1987)
  5.Central Providence Act of Singapore (Chapter 36), http://?statutes.?agc.?gov.?sg/?aol/?search/?display/?view.?w3p;ident=-9476963-b5dd-47e3-ad86-abf8ab544f7d;page=-;query=?DocId%3A%22f1b7803c-71dd-4732-b7f0-231fef8142ca%22%20?Status%3Ainforce%20?Depth%3A0;rec=-#pr25-he- . (courtesy Dr Kelvin Tan, Ministry of Health). Accessed 25 Feb 2015
  6.Felder, S., Werblow, A., Zweifel, P.: Do red herrings swim in circles? Controlling for the endogeneity of time to death. J. Health Econ. 29(2), 205-12 (2010)CrossRef PubMed
  7.Glied, S., Smith, P.C. (eds.): The Oxford handbook of health economics. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2011)
  8.Hsu, J.: Medical savings accounts: what is at risk? World health report background paper, p. 17. World Health Organization, Geneva (2010)
  9.Jones, A.M. (ed.): The Elgar companion to health economics, 2nd edn. Edward Elgar, Cheltenham (2012)
  10.Kapp, M.B.: De facto health-care rationing by age: the law has no remedy. J. Legal Med. 19, 232-49 (1998)CrossRef
  11.Leukert-Becker, K., Zweifel, P.: Preferences for health insurance in Germany and the Netherlands—a tale of two countries. Health Econ. Rev. 4(1), 1-1 (2014)CrossRef
  12.Malone, N., Rycroft-Malone, J.: Equity and rationing in the NHS: past to present. J. Nurs. Manag. 6(6), 325-32 (1998)CrossRef PubMed
  13.Manning, W.G., Marquis, M.S.: Health insurance: the tradeoff between risk pooling and moral hazard. J. Health Econ. 15(5), 609-39 (1996)CrossRef PubMed
  14.Maynard, A., Bloor, J.: Our certain fate: rationing in health care. Office of Health Economics, London (1998)
  15.Newhouse, J.P.: Medical care costs: how much welfare loss? J. Econ. Perspect. 6(3), 3-1 (1992)CrossRef PubMed
  16.Ramskov, J., Munksgaard, J.: Elasticities—a theoretical introduction. The Balmorel Project, University of Copenhagen (2001) (Website)
  17.Reinhardt, U.E.: Rationing health care: what it is, what it is not, and why we cannot avoid it. Baxter Health Pol Rev 2, 66-9 (1996)
  18.Rice, T.: The economics of health reconsidered, 3rd edn. Health Administration Press, Chicago (2009)
  19.Rivett, G.: NHS history, Ch 1: 1948-957, Establishing the NHS/emerging problems (1948) (Website)
  20.Tobin, J.: Survey of the theory of rationing. Ectrica 20(4), 521-33 (1952)
  21.Trottmann, M., Beck, K., Zweifel, P.: Supply-side and demand-side cost sharing in de-regulated social health insurance: which is more effective? J. Health Econ. 29(4), 489-98 (2010)CrossRef PubMed
  
• 作者单位：Peter Zweifel (1) (2)
  
  1. University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
  2. Kreuth 371, 9531, Bad Bleiberg, Austria
  
• 刊物类别：Business and Economics
• 刊物主题：Economics
  Economic Policy
  Public Health
  Public Finance and Economics
  
• 出版者：Springer Berlin / Heidelberg
• ISSN：1618-7601

文摘

The point of departure of this Editorial is the fact that we all are engaged in self-rationing in our everyday lives. We would like to spend more money on all sorts of nice things and devote more time to our cherished activities. Imposed rationing is characteristic of wartime governments, who seek to prevent the rich from gobbling up the resources left by the army. Since the publication in 1987 of David Callahan’s Setting Limits: Medical Goals in an Aging Society (Callahan, Setting limits: medical goals in an aging society, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1987), rationing of health care has become a widely debated issue (the Internet is full of pertinent entries). While rationing has also been addressed by health economists, there are three puzzling observations. First, Callahan (Callahan, Setting limits: medical goals in an aging society, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1987) wrote for an American audience whereas rationing was introduced by the British National Health Service (NHS) well before 1987, with little debate. Second, the economic theory of rationing had been laid out by James Tobin [Ectrica 20(4): 521-33, 1952] as early as 1952—but health economists seem to have neglected his groundwork when writing about rationing. Third, they accept government-imposed rationing as inevitable in the case of health care, as though the self-rationing alternative was unavailable. An attempt is made here to provide rational explanations for these puzzles.