Fiscal decentralization in the Italian NHS: what happens to interregional redistribution?

This paper explores how pressures for an increased decentralization of taxing powers to sub-national governments may affect the degree of income redistribution across regional territories accomplished by the Italian NHS. In Italy, political responsibilities for health care are decentralized to regional governments, but the central government retains a critical role in ensuring all citizens uniform access to health services. To this end the central government runs an expenditure needs equalizing system to top up regional governments own resources. However, this system is currently put under question by strong political pressures calling for a weakening of central government involvement. Applying a well developed econometric approach we find that the NHS currently reduces interregional differences in per-capita income by about 7% of GDP. A reform of the NHS in terms of a reduction of expenditure standards produces a weakening of redistribution across jurisdictions, the size of which crucially depends on the financing arrangements of health care that will be actually adopted. We conclude that the decentralization of the NHS would give rise to relevant policy issues concerning in particular the different health care spending possibilities across regions and the impact on the interregional mobility of patients.

Pharmacodynamics of low molecular weight heparin in patients undergoing bariatric surgery: a prospective, randomised study comparing two doses of parnaparin (BAFLUX study).

BACKGROUND: The optimal dose of low-molecular-weight-heparin (LMWH) to prevent venous thromboembolism (VTE) after bariatric surgery remains controversial. AIM: The aim of this study was to evaluate the pharmacodynamic parameters of two doses of the LMWH parnaparin administered to patients undergoing bariatric surgery. METHODS: Patients were enrolled in a multicentre, open label, pilot study and were randomised to receive 4250 IU/day [n=36; 30 females; median age: 38 years (23-56); median BMI: 46.7 Kg/m(2) (36.5-58.8)] or 6400 IU/day [n=30; 24 females; median age: 42 years (22-63); median BMI: 43.7 Kg/m(2) (36.1-64.1)] of parnaparin s.c. for 7-11 days. The pharmacodynamic effects of parnaparin were analysed by measuring the anti Factor Xa activity on day 0 (12 hours after the first parnaparin injection), day 4 and day 6 after surgery (before and 4 hours after parnaparin administration). RESULTS: In 98.3% of patients receiving 4250 IU/day the peak anti-Xa levels were in the range of 0.1-0.4 IU/ml. Higher anti-Xa levels were observed in patients receiving 6400 IU/day: in 62.3% of these patients the peak anti-Xa levels were greater than 0.4 IU/ml. The anti-Xa levels measured 4 hours after injection on days 4 and 6 were not statistically correlated with BMI for either dose of parnaparin (p=0.077 and p=0.401 for 4250 or 6400 IU/day, respectively). CONCLUSION: The dose of 4250 IU/day seems adequate to achieve prophylactic anti-Xa levels in morbid obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery. Conversely, most of the patients receiving 6.400 IU/day show anti-Xa levels higher than the recommended prophylactic values.

Market structure and technology: evidence from the Italian National Health Service.

Sutton (1991, Sunk costs and market structure. Cambridge: MIT Press; 1998, Technology and market structure. Cambridge: MIT Press) theorised that industries evolve into distinct market configurations in terms of concentration, depending upon product homogeneity and whether R&D or advertising are relevant relative to set-up costs. This paper tests the existence of such a relationship between technological profiles and market structure empirically, using the health care services provided by the Italian National Health Service as the specific economic framework. Our results support the empirical predictions made by Sutton. In particular, in markets where the technological intensity is low the lower bound to concentration converges monotonically to zero when the market size increases, for any level of product homogeneity. Conversely, in markets where the technological intensity is high the lower bound of concentration converges to some positive (non-zero) value when market size increases, while the lower bound increases (from zero) when the level of product homogeneity increases.