Health and well-being policy includes both public health actions, aiming to improve the population’s health, and policies seeking to improve the efficiency of the health system, especially through the organisation and financing of health care. The objective of reducing health inequalities is a common feature to all these policies.

As regards health care demand, health insurance mechanisms are helpful in reducing the financial risk associated with the cost of medical treatment. As different insurance mechanisms involve partial or complete management of health care costs, they have different distribution implications and modify the prices of health care provided. In addition, many public health policies seek to change health behaviour, through information, education, or incentive; these behaviours include in particular the consumption of tobacco, alcohol, food, or risky sexual activites.

IPP Focus. Multiple approaches are taken to analyse the impact of health policies. Micro-simulation of health care costs and of individual financial contributions enables ex ante assessment of reforms of the health insurance system, both in terms of risk coverage and of fairness. As regards health care supply, the assessment of public policies is in particular reliant on understanding the determinants of hospital care productivity. As regards public health policies, in the absence of randomised trials, the choice of evaluation method depends on the available data, and often involves the exploitation of “natural” experiments.