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 design of social insurance is modelled through majority voting. Individuals, risking the loss of income, vote sequentially on the type of benefits, flat v. proportional, as well as the level of social insurance benefits. The effects of allowing social insurance to be topped up in the private market are then examined. As expected, the existence of an actuarially fair insurance alternative de...

I introduce risk-averse preferences, labor-leisure choice, capital, individual productivity shocks, and market incompleteness to the standard Mortensen-Pissarides model of search and matching and explore the model’s cyclical properties. There are four main findings. First and foremost, the baseline model can generate the observed large volatility of unemployment and vacancies with a realistic r...

Identifying the demographic factors that affect the likelihood of being allowed disability insurance benefits under the social security program is important in assessing the operation of that program and has been the focus of continuing research. Previous studies in this area, which have been limited to cross-tabular analyses of aggregated data and the examination of a few variables at a time, ...

The quality of patient care varies based on numerous factors, such as health care setting, geographic location, access to medications, insurance coverage, and treatment protocols. Recently, the issue of whether use of clinical pathways can reduce costs and inappropriate variability in care has been the subject of much debate. As clinical treatment guidelines and pathways are increasingly deploy...

Political statements about the relationship between the economyand health intensify during economic downturns and fade in times of prosperity. Population health researchers share this cyclical interest in that the numbers of peerreviewed publications on this topic increase during and immediately after recessions. In this issue of the Journal, Cylus et al. (Am J Epidemiol. 2014;180(1):45–52) fol...

Background: General anesthesia draw the most commonly used modalities for post cesarean delivery pain relief is systemic administration of opioids, while the administration of small dose of intrathecal opioid during spinal anesthesia can be a possible alternative. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of buprenorphine on cesarean section prescribed intrathecally. Methods: In this d...

Telemedicine refers to a kind of treatment in which all medical interventions, diagnoses, treatment decisions, and recommendations are made using the patient’s data, documents, and other information transmitted through telecommunication systems. Telemedicine might run between one patient and one physician or one patient and several physicians, including other healthcare specialists. Telemedicin...

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...