Health care systems all over the world are experiencing some change as they look for a new balance between supply and demand. This article provides context for the U.S. health care financing debate by examining the health care systems of five other countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, China and India. The authors show that, with few exceptions, countries around the world have seen ...

AIM to illustrate demographic differences and recent trends in the provision and structure of long-term care systems in the 10 countries participating in the Resident Assessment Instrument studies (Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA). METHOD data were assembled from government documents, statistical yearbooks and articles from jour...

Out-of-pocket (OOP) payments are the principal means of financing health care throughout much of Asia. We estimate the magnitude and distribution of OOP payments for health care in fourteen countries and territories accounting for 81% of the Asian population. We focus on payments that are catastrophic, in the sense of severely disrupting household living standards, and approximate such payments...

Many nations have undergone changes in health care financing and services. The public notices policy changes in health care and frequently bears new and unexpected costs or barriers to care unwillingly. This paper presents data from surveys of about 1,000 adults conducted during April-June 1998 in each of five countries--Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States-...

The dynamics of financing health care among various levels of government and the private sector are rapidly changing; structural relationships among health care providers are also being altered. These changes are placing increased importance on State-level expenditure estimates that will be instrumental in measuring the differential impact of Federal policies and State-specific initiatives on i...

The discussion paper analyses the development of the home-based, semi-residential and residential care infrastructure since the introduction of the long-term care insurance. The presentation is supplemented with a review of local area low-threshold offers. The accessibility and claims on available service offerings are discussed from the perspective of different groups of elderly people. The re...

This overview discusses articles published in this issue of the Health Care Financing Review, entitled "Managed Care: Advances in Financing." Articles cover the cutting-edge developments in payment methods for managed care organizations and their providers; new approaches to financing managed health care services for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and special sub-populations; and the finan...

1) Sustainable Tailored Integrated Care for Older People in Europe (SUSTAIN: http://www. sustain-eu.org/). In SUSTAIN action research is applied to improve established integrated care programmes for older people living at home with multiple health and social care needs. These initiatives include prevention-oriented primary care, home nursing, palliative care, transfer care after hospital discha...