The almost universal approach to the economic evaluation of health technologies is to compare the cost-effectiveness of treatments, using metrics such as the „cost per quality adjusted life year‟. This is based on the reasonable view that a prime objective of the health system is to maximize health. However, another fundamental role of universal health insurance is to protect citizens from fina...

Several developing countries lack a medical insurance system with universal coverage, so access to medical services is not easy, principally for people living in poverty. One of the biggest issues for designing healthcare systems in developing countries is how to include those not formally employed. Therefore, it is important to implement targeted interventions so that the most in need are not ...

Background National/social health insurance schemes have increasingly been seen in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as a vehicle to universal health coverage (UHC) and a viable alternative funding mechanism for the health sector. Several countries, including Ghana, have thus introduced and implemented mandatory national health insurance schemes (NHIS) as part of reform efforts towa...

As the 2008 presidential election renews the debate about health insurance coverage, the United States can learn from the experience of countries that have recently moved to achieve universal coverage. What gains can we expect from coverage for all in improved health, better access to health care, and reduced financial burdens for the most vulnerable patients? What are the potential downsides o...

The assumption that consumer choice cannot be used to achieve cost control in health care is invalid. It does not do so today because the tax treatment of health care leads to perverse consumer incentives that encourage cost escalation. By reforming the tax treatment of insurance and out-of-pocket medical costs, it is possible to design an efficient and universal system in which consumer choice...

Economists would have formulated several aspects of the health care reform debate differently than policy entrepreneurs did. Economists would have questioned whether health care costs must be contained and whether either competition or global budgets were a “magic bullet” for doing so. They also would have emphasized the distortive costs of subsidies and taxes necessary to reach universal cover...

A paper by Selden and Sing (2008) reminds us of what was at stake 45 years ago, when Emmett Hall recommended universal public medical insurance over private-public alternatives. While focusing exclusively on the United States, it also helps to explain why universal pharmacare is being diverted into that same private-public dead end through public "catastrophic" coverage. Governments finance, th...

asymmetric information in iran’s insurance market: case study for automobile insurance in iran insurance companythis research aims to test the presence of asymmetric information by using the dynamic information of automobile policyholders in the iran insurance company (iic). the conditional independence test is conducted by bivariate probit model, the dynamic properties which are presented for ...

n engl j med 373;14 nejm.org october 1, 2015 1285 coverage and notable improvements in outcomes and equity. Health insurance was introduced in Turkey in 1945, at first covering blue-collar workers and later other groups. From 1960 onward, Turkey’s 5-year development plans included universal health coverage as an objective; a new constitution in 1982 guaranteed rights to health insurance and hea...

The presidential election has focused public attention on the need for health system reform--to ensure health insurance for all, to make health care more accessible and responsive to patients, and to slow the growth in health care cost. This issue brief sets forth a framework for expanding health coverage that offers Americans a choice of a product modeled on Medicare to those under age 65, mad...