Recent empirical and theoretical literature sheds light on the disappointing experience with implementation of primary health care programs in developing countries. This article focuses on the evidence showing two weak links in the chain between government spending for services to improve health and actual improvements in health status. First, institutional capacity is a vital ingredient in pro...

Current national expenditure series in the health sector focus predominantly on spending for medical services. However, as the percentage of elderly individuals grows, national policy makers will increasingly require an expenditure series which includes combined expenditure for social care as well as medical expenditures. In one country, Sweden, national policy makers have begun to relate polic...

This paper re-examines the relation between the predictability of health care spending and incentives due to adverse selection. Within an explicit model of health plan decisions about service levels, we show that predictability (how well spending on certain services can be anticipated), predictiveness (how well the predicted levels of certain services contemporaneously co-vary with total health...

Concerns regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have raised awareness about the negative public health impacts of trade and investment agreements. In the past decade, we have learned much about the implications of trade agreements for public health: reduced equity in access to health services; increased flows of unhealthy commodities; limits on access to medicines; and constrained policy...

T wo much-anticipated national reports on comparative effectiveness research appeared at the end of June, a first step toward spending the economic stimulus funds intended to compare different medical interventions, improve medical care, and ultimately help contain health care costs. Of the $1.1 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act allocated to comparative effectiveness researc...

I n 2006, Massachusetts passed landmark legislation ensuring near-universal health insurance coverage to residents of the state through a combination of mechanisms. By 2008, only 2.6 percent of Massachusetts residents were uninsured, considerably below the national average of 15 percent. However, continued increases in the cost of health care services threaten the long-term viability of the ini...

background and purpose: health indices, regarding to their role in the development of society, are one of the most important indices at national level. success of national development programs is largely dependent on the establishment of appropriate goals at the health sector, among which access to healthcare facilities is an essential requirement. the aim of this study was to examine the dispa...