BACKGROUND Almost 97% of the Korean population is covered by National Health Insurance and are entitled to receive the same level of insurance benefits, regardless of how much each enrollee contributes to the system. However, the percentage of out-of-pocket payments is still high. This study examines whether the incurrence of high medical expenses affects household income. METHODS We use the ...

health care services based on the structure of the health financing system and recent experience in the Philippines. It suggests that functions in the health financing system, in particular payment schemes, have a powerful influence on the behavior of all actors in health systems and this determines who bears the financial risks and financial burdens of access to health services. In the Philipp...

BACKGROUND A previous systematic review reported that increase in patients' medication cost-sharing reduced patients' adherence to medication. However, a study among patients with medication subsidies who received medication at no cost found that medication nonadherence was also high. To our knowledge, no study has evaluated the influence of different medication payment schemes on patients' med...

BACKGROUND In Sweden, the social security and sickness insurance systems are comprehensive and aim to provide people whose illness prevents them from earning their own living, with either sickness benefits or disability pension. Some, however, are not entitled to these benefits or receive social insurance benefits at a level too low for subsistence, and are referred to social assistance. The pu...

This paper considers the effect of retiree health insurance coverage on retirement decisions of academics, and attempts to answer two key questions of interest in this conference volume: 1) how do retiree health insurance plans affect retirement decisions? and 2) if retiree health plans are cut back or eliminated, by how much will faculty delay their retirements? I argue that the risk of uninsu...

Although physicians are often expected to be gatekeepers to health insurance benefits such as paid sick leave, research indicates a substantial reluctance to reject patient requests for sickness certificates. We show that private information on the patient’s part creates a conflict between the healer and gatekeeper roles: if a patient reports subjective symptoms indicating a need for sick leave...

In OECD countries, medicines spending accounts for approximately 17% of total health spending or 1.5% of gross domestic product (GDP) [1]. New technologies and pharmaceuticals have been important contributors to rising health care costs. At the same time, patients may not have access to cost–effective medicines because of lack of health insurance coverage, limited insurance benefits, high medic...

Health insurance benefit mandates are believed to have adverse effects on the labor market, but efforts to document such effects for mental health parity mandates have had limited success. I show that one reason for this failure is that the association between parity mandates and labor market outcomes vary with mental distress. Accounting for this heterogeneity, I find adverse labor market effe...

I SRAEL’S first social security measure designed to cover more than a single risk was enacted on November 18, 1953, and became effective April 1, 1954. It provides benefits to the aged and to widows and orphans, maternity benefits, and benefits for work accidents. The provision of work accident and maternity benefits represents the improvement of existing programs and their consolidation into a...

Background   Should health systems invest more in access to care by expanding insurance coverage or in health care services including improving the quality of care? Comparing these options experimentally would shed light on the impact and cost-effectiveness of these strategies. Methods   The Quality Improvement Demonstration Study (QIDS) was a randomized policy experiment conducted across 30 ...