Let's talk about scarcity. When we discussed the various funding sources of health care, we saw that some basic care was financed through the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act. This concerned the socalled 'uninsurable risks'. Home care is considered one of these 'uninsurable risks'. As a consequence the money that is available is always limited. In contrast to insurances, which are always in a certain way a matter of supply and demand, this basic care is a matter of scarcity. You have to put up with the money the government makes available. Some extra financial recourses are found by raising the income-related contribution that clients need to pay for certain products and by having them pay for more products. Although especially clients that need a lot of care suitor from these measures, scarcity still rules the waves, That is one thing. The other thing is that the government tries to spend the money that is available for home care in another way. I will give you two examples of this. One: a few years ago a 'personal budget' system was introduced. This means that people who need home care can obtain a certain amount of money, with which they can purchase care from the provider of their choice. This means that they can buy care from regular non-profit agencies, private bureaus, or informal carets. For the regular home care organizations it means that less money is available. They can only obtain the money when the client decides to purchase care with their organization. In many cases, however, clients decide to pay their informal caters, so that less money is available for the existing organizations.
The second example of another way of spending the money for home care is by 'outputpricing'. We have seen this before, namely with the hospital organizations. In the same way, home care organizations have to make deals about their production for certain products. It is a way of budgeting the organizations by only making money available if the production is within certain limits. In these and other ways the government tries to enhance efficiency within the home care. This is, however, only possible up to a certain limit. The number of clients that
