Page 35 - Effective healthcare cost containment policies Using the Netherlands as a case study - Niek W. Stadhouders

Policy options to contain healthcare costs: a review and classification
After relative stability we see an increase around 2008 in the literature that tracks market oriented cost containment (figure 2.3a). As over half the articles are US-oriented and the US may be considered an outlier healthcare system (Böhm et al., 2013), we also show the relative quote of cost containment targets for OECD countries excluding the US (figure 2.3b). When excluding the US, market oriented policies decrease to about 25-30% of all policies. In OECD countries other than the US, studies on volume controls are predominant at about 40 percent. Budgeting peaked in popularity in the early 90’s with 20% of all policies, but then levelled off to about 10%. Budgeting and price controls also plateau at somewhat higher levels than the articles that cover these issues for the US.
a
1 0,9 0,8 0,7 0,6 0,5 0,4 0,3 0,2 0,1 0
b
1 0,9 0,8 0,7 0,6 0,5 0,4 0,3 0,2 0,1 0
Figure 2.3: The moving 5-year average trends of relative coverage in literature of primary cost containment targets in (a) all OECD countries and (b) OECD countries excluding the US.
Figure 2.4 plot some trends in individual cost containment policies that have been studied most. Across market oriented policies third party payer structure tops during the late
market
volume
price
budget
market
volume
price
budget
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