background & aim: family caregivers of cancer patients are at a high risk of physical, psychological and emotional problems, which could adversely affect their quality of life. this study aimed to evaluate the quality of life of the female caregivers of breast cancer patients in sabzevar, iran. methods: this cross-sectional study was conducted on 105 participants in sabzevar, iran in 2013. subj...

BACKGROUND One of the main objectives of the Ghana National Health Insurance Scheme, at its establishment in 2003, was to ease financial burden of the full cost recovery policy, particularly on the poor. However, currently, majority of the scheme's subscribers are individuals in the upper wealth quintile, as the poor in society rather have not subscribed. We explored the motivational factors as...

The paper examines the nature of health insurance contracts when insurance companies pool highand low-risk individuals. In a spatial product differentiation model, the normal forces of competition induce quality provision, but selection incentives induce insurers to under-provide quality. To offset selection incentives, the government can reimburse some of the insurers’ costs. However, such a s...

The regulatory schemes currently used for reliability improvement have weaknesses in the provision of quality services based on the customers’ perspective. These schemes consider the average of the service as a criterion to incentivize or penalize the distribution system operators (DSOs). On the other hand, most DSOs do not differentiate electricity services at the customer level, due to the st...

Motivated by applications in the health insurance industry, we consider a seller who designs and sells a set of vertically differentiated products to a population of quality-sensitive customers. The seller’s business environment entails an uncertainty about production costs. We characterize the seller’s optimal price-quality schedule in the cases of: (a) static cost uncertainty, and (b) dynamic...

PURPOSE Low- and middle-income countries are increasingly pursuing health financing reforms aimed at achieving universal health coverage. As these countries rapidly expand access to care, overburdened health systems may fail to deliver high-quality care, resulting in poor health outcomes. Public insurers responsible for financing coverage expansions have the financial leverage to influence the ...

BACKGROUND Health insurance has the potential to improve access to health care and protect people from the financial risks of diseases. However, health insurance coverage is often low, particularly for people most in need of protection, including children and other vulnerable populations. OBJECTIVES To assess the effectiveness of strategies for expanding health insurance coverage in vulnerabl...