10 de juny 2016

Health economics in Spain: two recent interesting articles


Health Economics (2016)

Editorial written by David Cantanero Associate professor at the Department of Economics, University of Cantabria and Juan Oliva Associate professor at the Department of Economics University of Castilla la Mancha

The editorial puts the focus around the eight categories described by Alan Williams in the 1987-plumbing diagram (determinants of health; measurement and valuation of health; economic evaluation of treatment; demand for insurance and healthcare; supply of healthcare; market equilibrium and rationing; system evaluation; planning, budgeting and monitoring).

They put some Spanish papers as an example of how health economics is a powerful tool to evaluate public programs and policies.



Health Care System in Spain (2016)

Written by Guillem López-Casasnovas Professor at the Department of Economics of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona and Beatriz González López-Valcarcel Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

The article overviews the Spanish healthcare system and its idiosyncratic interconnected sources of problems including, a deficit of good governance, inadequate incentives for agents to take proper responsibility, and a lack of a consensus model for articulating the public and private sectors. In this paper the authors propose some antidotes in order to improve the future prospects of the system: to combine governance with autonomy, to change copayments and to modify the institutional architecture in making coverage decisions, by creating an independent agency, along the line of NICE in England. This latter country as well as the Netherlands provides reform lessons from which the Spanish system may learn.

photo: bansky
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