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Gaynor M & Vogt W, (2000)
‘Antitrust and Competition in Health Care Markets’
in Culyer AJ and Newhouse JP (eds), Handbook of Health
Economics,
Amsterdam, North Holland.
- Reviews research issues in the economics of competition and antitrust
in health care markets.
- Summarises the current literature and suggests
methodological approaches for major research issues, focusing on hospital
competition/mergers and
on insurer monopsony.
- With respect to hospital competition, the key
theoretical questions are (i) the definition of the ‘market’ and
(ii) whether or not ownership status affects behaviour.
- Antitrust cases
against hospital mergers often hinge on the definition of the relevant
market. The two important dimensions of definition are
product market and geographic market.
- The product market is usually taken
to be “general acute care inpatient
hospital services”, or similar.
- The authors outline a hypothetical ‘ideal’ method
for measuring geographic hospital markets, which requires the researcher
to know the
full demand system for the hospitals.
- The authors conclude that although
there has been a significant amount of research in health economics
on the competitive workings
of healthcare
markets, this area is still in its infancy – as vigorous competition
only emerged in health care markets relatively recently.
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