INTRODUCTION Health care financing reforms in both China and Vietnam have resulted in greater financial difficulties in accessing health care, especially for the rural poor. Both countries have been developing rural health insurance for decades. This study aims to evaluate and compare equity in access to health care in rural health insurance system in the two countries. METHODS Household surv...

OBJECTIVE To produce cost estimates of proposed health insurance benefit mandates for the California legislature. DATA SOURCES The 2001 California Health Interview Survey, 2002 Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Education Trust California Employer Health Benefits Survey, Milliman Health Cost Guidelines, and ad hoc surveys of large health plans were used. STUDY DESIGN We developed ...

There is growing evidence to suggest that exposure to natural environments can be associated with mental health benefits. Proximity to greenspace has been associated with lower levels of stress (Thompson et al., 2012) and reduced symptomology for depression and anxiety (Beyer et al., 2014), while interacting with nature can improve cognition for children with attention deficits (Taylor and Kuo,...

Understanding public preferences in terms of health benefit packages (HBPs) remains limited, yet gathering community insights is an important endeavour when developing people-centred health systems and moving towards universal health coverage. Our study aimed to address this gap in knowledge by eliciting community preferences for the social health insurance benefit package among the uninsured i...

The State Employees’ Group Health Insurance Program has experienced growth in health care costs resulting in projected program deficits beginning in Fiscal Year 2001-02. Expenses are projected to exceed revenues by $28.8 million in Fiscal Year 2000-01 and are projected to exceed revenues by $121.3 million in 2001-02 and $225.1 million in 2002-03. The Legislature should consider options in four ...

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   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 ...

VARIATIONS ON THE FAMILIAR REFRAIN “COSTS SHOULD not factor into decisions about health care” permeate contemporary discussions on the state of the US health care system. The US populace seems to strongly agree with this proposition: a 2003 poll indicated that 86% of US citizens do not support the denial of health services for reasons of cost. A significant part of this resistance can be attrib...

BACKGROUND Health insurance contributes to reducing the economic burden of disease and improving access to healthcare. In 2016, the Chinese government announced the integration of the New Cooperative Medical Scheme (NCMS) and Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URBMI) to reduce system segmentation. Nevertheless, it was unclear whether there would be any geographic variation in health insura...

Purchasers and health plans are reemphasizing deductibles, coinsurance, and other consumer incentives in response to renewed inflation and the continuing backlash against managed care. This paper explores the partial convergence of cost sharing and benefit design for preferred provider and health maintenance products and highlights experiments that foster price-conscious choice among benefit co...