Gravelle Hugh, Siciliani Luigi
National Primary Care Research and Development Centre, Centre for Health Economics, University of York, York, UK.
Health Econ. 2009 Aug;18(8):977-86. doi: 10.1002/hec.1423.
In many public healthcare systems treatments are rationed by waiting time. We examine the optimal allocation of a fixed supply of a given treatment between different groups of patients. Even in the absence of any distributional aims, welfare is increased by third degree waiting time discrimination: setting different waiting times for different groups waiting for the same treatment. Because waiting time imposes dead weight losses on patients, lower waiting times should be offered to groups with higher marginal waiting time costs and with less elastic demand for the treatment.
在许多公共医疗体系中，治疗是根据等待时间来分配的。我们研究了给定治疗的固定供应量在不同患者群体之间的最优分配。即使没有任何分配目标，通过三级等待时间歧视（即对等待相同治疗的不同群体设定不同的等待时间）也能提高福利。因为等待时间会给患者带来无谓损失，所以对于边际等待时间成本较高且对治疗需求弹性较小的群体，应该提供更短的等待时间。
