Page 39 - 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
suggested for market based provision systems (other than the US). This might indicate that researchers look into alternative solutions to enhance the cost containment possibilities of their healthcare system. If policy makers use the existing literature in designing and implementing cost containment policies, this could induce to the emergence of more hybrid health systems (Joumard et al., 2010; Schmid et al., 2010; Wendt et al., 2005). However, for the US the literature about cost containment is more biased towards market oriented policies. This might suggest that in the US, strategies such as budgeting and price controls are not considered to be very realistic policy options (Stabile et al., 2013). Alternatively, the US might be more market oriented for cost containment presently as historically the US system might have lagged behind in market constraints compared to other OECD countries (White, 2007).
When designing cost containment measures, governments and policymakers can benefit from an encompassing overview of cost containment policies that is grounded in the peer-reviewed literature. Our model might aid policymakers by showing possible directions of cost containment not previously considered. Combinations of different cost containment strategies such as price and volume controls might lower cost growth; while budgeting might prevent cost shifting and market oriented policies might increase efficiency. Inquiring into combinations of policies could provide new insights into effective cost containment. A follow-up systematic review holds the promise to inform scholars and policymakers with strong evidence of the real world effectiveness of (combinations of) different cost containment policies.
This article categorizes policy options from the literature directed at health care cost control. The resulting taxonomy will aid policy makers in considering strategies to control health costs. We identified forty-one options, which were placed into four main groups: price controls, volume controls, budgeting and ‘market oriented’ policies. Overall, market oriented policies received most attention in literature. This was mainly driven by the overrepresentation of US studies. For other countries, volume controls were the predominant target. We found that budgeting and price controls were sparsely represented in literature, especially in studies about the US. Market oriented policies were mentioned and studied more in public provision systems like the UK, Sweden and New Zealand. Budgeting was more studied in market provision systems like Canada, Germany and France. Cost containment policies could increase convergence in these systems, if policymakers do follow such trends in academic cost containment interest in their real world implementation strategies.
2.6 Concluding remarks
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