Many low- and middle-income countries are seeking to reform their health financing systems to move towards universal coverage. This typically means that financing is based on people's ability to pay while, for service use, benefits are based on the need for health care. Financing incidence analysis (FIA) and benefit incidence analysis (BIA) are two popular tools used to assess equity in health ...

The US Maternal and Child Health Bureau's Division of Services to Children With Special Health Care Needs has developed a national agenda for the development of systems of care of children with special health care needs. The purpose of this presentation was to discuss family activism in the care of children with special health care needs, and to explore the obstacles and successes encountered b...

China has undergone great economic and social change since 1978 with far reaching implications for the health care system and ultimately for the health status of the population. The Chinese Medical Reform of the 1980s made cost recovery a primary objective. The urban population is mostly protected by generous government health insurance. A high share government budget is allocated to urban heal...

Ensuring financial access to health services is a critical challenge for poor countries if they are to reach the health Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This article examines the case of Rwanda, a country which has championed innovative health care financing policies. Between 2000 and 2007, Rwanda has improved financial access for the poor, increased utilization of health services and reduc...

OBJECTIVE To estimate the expenditure on dental care of Mexican households, analyze their trends, and determine the factors associated with the decision to spend and the amount of money spent in 2000, 2002, and 2004. MATERIAL AND METHODS Using the National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure for 2000, 2002, and 2004, the national dental health care expenditure was calculated. To facili...

Those concerned with poverty and health have sometimes viewed equity and human rights as abstract concepts with little practical application, and links between health, equity and human rights have not been examined systematically. Examination of the concepts of poverty, equity, and human rights in relation to health and to each other demonstrates that they are closely linked conceptually and op...

All industrialized nations are facing a crisis in health care financing. Rising expectations coupled with increasing specialization and technologic capacities have forced health care payers to examine their assumptions and to seek data on the outcomes of medical interventions. Clinical investigators who have been taught to use randomized controlled trials that evaluate efficacy under experiment...

This article addresses the potential role of business leadership in diverse efforts to reform health care financing: exploring managers efforts to alter health care markets in their role as large purchasers of health insurance, their potential contributions to future national policy proposals, and their involvement with community-level activities to control local health costs and quality. I arg...

Health financing policies are marked by confusion between policy tools and policy objectives, especially in low and middle income countries. This paper attempts to address this problem by providing a conceptual framework that is driven by the normative objective of enhancing the 'insurance function' (access to needed care without financial impoverishment) of health care systems. The framework i...

A desirable system for providing and financing health care must balance three goals: (1) preventing the deprivation of care because of a patient's inability to pay; (2) avoiding wasteful spending; and (3) allowing care to reflect the different tastes of individual patients. This essay discusses the application of these goals and uses them to consider a reform of the system of health savings acc...