The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as a "resource for everyday living, not the objective of living"; however, worldwide, there remains an unmistakable inequity in level of health and access to healthcare. The WHO has published documents on financing health systems towards universal health coverage [1], promoting healthy life [2], improving performance of health systems [3], and ...

When settling healthcare bills, the Old Order Amish of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania rely on an ethos of mutual aid, independent of the government. Consonant with this philosophy, many Amish do not participate in or receive benefits from Social Security or Medicare. They are also exempted from the Affordable Care Act of 2010. This study expands the limited documentation of Amish Hospital Aid, ...

background: health inequalitymonitoring especially in health care financing field is very important. hence, this study tends to assess the inequality in household's capacity to pay and out-of-pocket health carepaymentsin tehran metropolis. methods: this cross-sectional study was performed in 2013.thestudy population was selected by stratified cluster sampling, and they constitute the typic...

Background Health financing is a sensitive issue that is currently being discussed around the world. Main concerns related to this are quality of health services and increasing healthcare cost. The most important features of health services that must be preserved are its equitability, affordability and quality. In many developing countries people are expected to contribute to the cost of health...

Managed care "backlash" rhetoric to the contrary, roadblocks to effective pain treatment occur both intrinsic and extrinsic to the healthcare system. Pain medicine, an emerging, formally recognized specialty, and the special population of patients which it serves, experience additional discreet barriers. Chief among these is a lack of clear identity and recognition of the specialty and the dise...