The quest for greater efficiency, fairness and responsiveness to the expectation of the people that system serve have brought about three generations of health system reforms in the twentieth century. The first generation saw the founding of national health care systems and extension to middle income nations of social insurance systems in the 1940s and 1950s. By the late 1960s the rising costs ...

BACKGROUND During the 2000s, two major legislative reforms concerning oral health care have been implemented in Finland. One entitled the whole population to subsidized care and the other regulated the timeframes of access to care. Our aim was, in a cross-sectional setting, to assess changes in and determinants of use of oral health care services before the first reform in 2000 and after both r...

The public sector has undergone a series of reforms, reforms that have had a great influence on the development of public accounting and reporting system. We consider that the most important issue that has resulted from these reforms refers to the introduction of consolidated financial reporting in the public sector. The public sector consolidated financial statements represent a challenging to...

The new reforms of health systems in Latin American countries began in the 1990s as part of wider state reforms, promoted by the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. In Colombia, the new system called National Social Security System for Health (Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Social en Salud, SNSSS) was defined by the Law number 100, approved in 1993 by the Congress. Its regulation is unde...

The mode of payment creates powerful incentives affecting provider behavior and the efficiency, equity and quality outcomes of health finance reforms. This article examines provider incentives as well as administrative costs, and institutional conditions for successful implementation associated with provider payment alternatives. The alternatives considered are budget reforms, capitation, fee-f...

Since the adoption of the Doi Moi (renovation) policy, the Vietnamese economy has continued to register high growth in the transition to a market-oriented economy. As a result, poverty incidence decreased from 58% in 1993 to 29% in 2002. Still, a large number of people are living at the near-poverty level. As the majority of them depend on unstable income from farming, they are vulnerable to na...

Nigeria has been plagued with acute power shortages due to poor performance of its power sector. Several policies and reforms have been implemented by the government to address the poor performance of the power generation, transmission and distribution sectors of the electricity industry. Also various strategies were employed by the government which includes encouraging private sector participa...

The pursuit of quality health care has been the concern of Kenya government in collaboration with key stakeholders including donors, NGOs, CBOs among others. To realize this, government has continued to develop and implement various national health policies and strategies necessary for enhancing financing of a wellfunctioning health system. Due to the economic reforms and performance experience...

The Medicare program is on the verge of major change. The proof of the value of reforms will not rest in how well the program meets the needs of the healthy and wealthy, but rather in whether they preserve or improve upon protections for those who would not be well served by an unregulated private sector--persons with low incomes and/or substantial health problems. This paper examines four key ...