Much of the existing literature on the financial protection of health insurance focuses on the impact of insurance status on total out-of-pocket expenditure on all sorts of care sought, regardless of whether the insured patients use their health insurance cards. Using Vietnam's 2006 Household Living Standard Survey data and an appropriate multivariate regression model, this article assesses the...

BACKGROUND China has the second highest caseload of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) in the world. In 2009, the Chinese government agreed to draw up a plan for MDR-TB prevention and control in the context of a comprehensive health system reform launched in the same year. DISCUSSION China is facing high prevalence rates of drug-resistant TB and MDR-TB. MDR-TB disproportionally affects...

Consumer groups fear that the use of genetic testing information in insurance underwriting might lead to the creation of an underclass of individuals who cannot obtain insurance; thus, these groups want to ban insurance companies from accessing genetic test results. Insurers contend that such a ban might lead to adverse selection that could threaten their financial solvency. To investigate the ...

OBJECTIVE To determine which states have laws that require the review of mandated health insurance benefits and describe the various approaches states take in reviewing mandated benefits, as stated in the mandated benefit review (MBR) laws. DATA SOURCES We queried online databases of the individual state statutes and reviewed the state statutes and state legislative agendas for all 50 states ...

3). This amount was equal to a little more than 89 percent of the total increase in monthly old-age and survivors insurance benefits paid to these cases. The average reduction in the old-age assistance payment was $4.44; the average increase in the old-age and survivors insurance benefit was $4.98. For aid to dependent children, the total reduction of $197,000 in monthly assistance payments equ...

Lung cancer screening is not established as a public health practice, yet the results of a recent large randomized controlled trial showed that screening with low-dose spiral computed tomography reduces lung cancer mortality. Using actuarial models, this study estimated the costs and benefits of annual lung cancer screening offered as a commercial insurance benefit in the high-risk US populatio...

INTRODUCTION Uncertainty about levels of employee use of an insurance benefit for smoking-cessation treatment has presented a barrier to employers considering the adoption of such coverage. This study examined self-reported awareness and use of a new insurance benefit for smoking-cessation treatment among a sample of Wisconsin state employees, retirees, and adult dependents. METHODS We evalua...