Growth of national healthcare spending is a problem confronting national governments of all industrially advanced countries. Healthcare spending in the U.S. reached 13.9% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2003, compared to only 8% in Japan. In the U.S., health insurance is voluntary, with 15% of the population uninsured. In Japan, health insurance is mandatory and virtually universal, with...

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), enacted on August 21, 1996 (Public Law 104-19), provides for improved access and renewability with respect to employment-related group health plans, to health insurance coverage sold in connection with group plans, and to the individual market (by amending the Public Health Service Act). The Act's provisions include improv...

BACKGROUND Although osteoporosis is increasing medical issue in the elderly population, attempts to analyze the characteristics of patients diagnosed with osteoporosis are rare in South Korea. We investigated the characteristics of patients diagnosed with osteoporosis using Korea's National Health Insurance claims data, which includes almost Korean population. METHODS We evaluated the patient...

BACKGROUND Medical tourism has attracted considerable interest within the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. Governments in the region tout the economic potential of treating foreign patients while several new private hospitals primarily target international patients. This analysis explores the perspectives of a range of medical tourism sector stakeholders in two LAC countries, Guatemal...

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the factors affecting demand for medical care in Iran the population for this study relates to the Medical Care Insurance Organization of Iran. For the sake of conducting the analysis a sample of 4260 individuals are chosen using a fuzzy sampling procedure. The data was then analyzed using a multinomial logit model. The results show that p...

This paper examines the stock market impact of captive insurance subsidiary formation on parent companies in the United Kingdom (UK) corporate sector. We report that the formation of an insurance captive has no e€ect on the ®nancial, systematic and unsystematic risks of the parent company, irrespective of the parent's market capitalisation. In addition, there is weak evidence that the market ha...

The health insurance system in Japan is based upon the Universal Medical Care Insurance System, which gives all citizens the right to join an insurance scheme of their own choice, as guaranteed by the provisions of Article 25 of the Constitution of Japan, which states: "All people shall have the right to maintain the minimum standards of wholesome and cultured living." The health care system in...

The national health spending for Americans has increased in recent years and is projected to continue on a rapid growth trajectory.1 This phenomenon is subject to the interplay of many forces, both demographic and economic.2 People are living longer, have declining health status for more years than in the past, and are consuming more medical services.3 Regardless of demographic characteristics,...