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This paper reviews policies in the area of healthy ageing. With the ageing of OECD countries’ population over coming decades, maintaining health in old age will become increasingly important. Successful policies in this area can increase the potential labour force and the supply of non-market services to others. They can also delay the need for longer-term care for the elderly. A first section briefly defines what is meant by healthy ageing and discusses similar concepts – such as “active ageing”. The paper then groups policies into four different types and within each, it describes the range of individual types of programmes that can be brought to bear to enhance improved health of the elderly. A key policy issue in this area concerns whether such programmes have a positive effect on health outcomes and whether they are costeffective.

Social Issues/Migration/Health

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This study presents a broad overview of health-system reforms in OECD countries over the past several decades. Reforms are assessed according to their impact on the following policy goals: ensuring access to needed health-care services; improving the quality of health care and its outcomes; allocating an "appropriate" level of pubic sector and economy-wide resources to health care (macroeconomic efficiency); and ensuring that services are provided in a cost-efficient and cost-effective manner (microeconomic efficiency).While nearly all OECD countries have achieved universal coverage of health-care risks, initiatives to address persistent disparities in access are now being undertaken in a number of countries. In light of new evidence of serious problems with health-care quality, many countries have recently introduced reforms intended to improve this, but it is too soon to generalise as to the relative effects of alternative approaches. A variety of instruments aimed at ... This paper is also published under OECD Economics Department Working Papers Series.

Health care teams.

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The paper reviews trends in health-care expenditure and assesses the main forces underlying the increase since 1960. It then describes and evaluates various health-care reforms. The report argues that top-down budget controls appear to have had some success in reducing the growth in health-care spending but, to be sustainable, they need to be supported by microeconomic reforms. Significant improvements in micro-efficiency and effectiveness can be obtained by improving incentives facing health-care providers. Policy developments in a few leading countries suggest that a system where funders/insurers act as purchasers, contracting with competing health-care providers, is a promising model for reform. A statistical annex assesses whether differences in institutional arrangements for funding and providing health care explain international differences in health expenditure ...

Economics

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This study presents a broad overview of health-system reforms in OECD countries over the past several decades. Reforms are assessed according to their impact on the following policy goals: ensuring access to needed health-care services; improving the quality of health care and its outcomes; allocating an "appropriate" level of pubic sector and economy-wide resources to health care (macroeconomic efficiency); and ensuring that services are provided in a cost-efficient and cost-effective manner (microeconomic efficiency).While nearly all OECD countries have achieved universal coverage of health-care risks, initiatives to address persistent disparities in access are now being undertaken in a number of countries. In light of new evidence of serious problems with health-care quality, many countries have recently introduced reforms intended to improve this, but it is too soon to generalise as to the relative effects of alternative approaches. A variety of instruments aimed at cost control have succeeded in slowing the growth of (particularly public) health-care spending over the 1980s and 1990s but these have not addressed the root causes of growth and health-care spending continues to rise as a share of GDP in most countries. On the other hand, a few countries have been concerned that spending restrictions have gone too far and hurt health system-performance. There is some evidence that supply of health services has become more efficient, particularly in the hospital sector, but scope for further gains exists. A range of measures, such as better payment methods, have improved the microeconomic incentives facing providers. However, introducing improved incentives through a more competitive environment among providers and insurers has proved difficult.

Health care reform.