ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the public part of the health care sector. The compulsory Austrian health insurance system is part of the social insurance system and covers, via its different funds, the health care costs of nearly all of the population. The Austrian health care system is organized along the principles of the Bismarck-model of social insurance. The private health insurance companies act as a second stage and play quite an important role in the field of in-patient and out-patient health care. Several attempts have been made to control the costs in the ambulatory sector of the Austrian health care system. The illustration of the role of cost-sharing in the Austrian health care system is a difficult task, because different forms of cost-sharing and co-payment are used for different procedures and by different insurance funds. Cost containment strategies in the past have been modest and failed to cut back in the hospital sector.
