Two contrasting hypotheses about what determines remittances sent by Dominican migrants to their rural parents in the Sierra are tested: (a) an insurance contract taken by parents with their migrant children and (b) an investment by migrants in potential bequests. Results show that the reason to remit is affected by destination (U.S. vs. cities in the Dominican Republic), gender, and household ...

Key Findings. (1) State-level decisions in implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) have led to significant state variation in the design of Health Insurance Marketplace (HIM) rating areas. In some designs, rural counties are grouped together, while in others, rural and urban counties have been deliberately mixed. (2) Urban counties have, on average, approximate...

INTRODUCTION In Kenya, maternal and child health accounts for a large proportion of the expenditures made towards healthcare. It is estimated that one in every five Kenyans has some form of health insurance. Availability of health insurance may protect families from catastrophic spending on health. The study intended to determine the factors affecting the uptake of health insurance among pregna...

Background: The desire for universal health coverage in developing countries has brought attention to community-based health insurance (CBHI) schemes in developing countries. The government of Uganda is currently debating policy for the national health insurance programme, targeting the integration of existing CBHI schemes into a larger national risk pool. However, while enrolment has been larg...

Editorial To achieve universal health insurance coverage, China has launched three phases of health care system reforms. The first round of reforms was embarked on in the mid-1980s with the introduction of market incentives. The second round began in 1997 with the introduction of the Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) scheme which provided health insurance coverage to all urban work...

Rural enrollment in Medicare Advantage (MA) and other prepaid plans grew by 15% from December 2008 to December 2009, faster than the 10% national growth rate. Preferred provider organization (PPO) plans drove the increased enrollment in MA plans in rural areas in 2009, while private fee-for-service (PFFS) plans continued to dominate the market with over 50% of enrollment. This landscape could c...

UNLABELLED This study sought to determine the contributions of socio-economic position and health insurance enrollment in explaining racial disparities in preventive dental visits (PDVs) among South Africans. Data on the dentate adult population participating in the last South African Demographic and Health Survey conducted during 2003-2004 (n = 6,312) was used. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Reportin...

In 2003, the Chinese government launched in a rural area a voluntary health insurance plan, called New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS), aiming to prevent rural residents from becoming impoverished by health expenditures. This paper uses a nation-wide four-year panel data to address county selection problem, households' participating behavior, and the impact of the plan. The results show: 1) C...

BACKGROUND Private health insurance has been a major focus of Commonwealth Government health policy for the last decade. Over this period, the Howard government introduced a number of policy changes which impacted on the take up of private health insurance. The most expensive of these was the introduction of the private health insurance rebate in 1997, which had an estimated cost of $3 billion ...