This document contains final regulations on the health insurance premium tax credit enacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, as amended by the Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010, the Comprehensive 1099 Taxpayer Protection and Repayment of Exchange Subsidy Overpayments Act of 2011, and the Department of Defen...

OBJECTIVE To explore the perceptions of health care professionals in examining the uses of pharmacogenomic data. METHODS A mailed questionnaire elicited respondent perceptions of how the use of pharmacogenomic information would impact the provision of health-related services (7-point scale: 7=strongly increase to 1=strongly decrease). Respondents were also asked to describe their level of agr...

Affordability is a key consideration in debates about the mandate for Americans to buy health insurance as required by the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Yet no universally agreedupon standard exists for determining what constitutes affordable health insurance. The question, then, is how best to make decisions about what is affordable. The articles in this issue by Peter Muenn...

This paper examines the role of the public sector in providing genetic insurance and health care when health risks are genetically determined at conception. We characterize the ex ante efficient outcome (where individuals are placed behind the veil of ignorance), and demonstrate that this outcome cannot be achieved by private health insurance markets or by a government which cannot commit to a ...

The main objective of the ‘Health Behaviour among School-Aged Children’ (HBSC) study was to collect information on health-related behaviour of South African youth. Another objective was to examine the association between learners’ perceptions of their school environment, teachers’ and peers’ support and their health behaviours. Furthermore, recommendations about the health behaviour of school-a...

The objective of this study was to estimate catastrophic healthcare expenditure in Brazil, using different definitions, and to identify vulnerability indicators. Data from the 2002-2003 Brazilian Household Budget Survey were used to derive total household consumption, health expenditure and household income. Socioeconomic position was defined by quintiles of the National Economic Indicator usin...

OBJECTIVE To determine the prevalence of the Papanicolaou exam among women aged 20 to 59 years in the city of Campinas (state of São Paulo, Brazil) and to analyze associations between this test and affiliation to private health insurance plans as well as socioeconomic/demographic variables and health-related behavior. METHOD To do so, a population-based, cross-sectional study was carried out....

BACKGROUND There is an ongoing debate in Germany about the assumption that patients with private health insurance (PHI) benefit from better access to medical care, including shorter waiting times (Lüngen et al. 2008), compared to patients with statutory health insurance (SHI). PROBLEM Existing analyses of the determinants for waiting times in Germany are a) based on patient self-reports and b...

Policy analysts consider the Netherlands health system a possible model for the United States. Since 2006 all Dutch citizens have to buy standardized individual health insurance coverage from a private insurer. Consumers have an annual choice among insurers, and insurers can selectively contract or integrate with health care providers. Subsidies make health insurance affordable for everyone. A ...

The experiences of people covered by Medicare and those with private employer insurance can help inform policy debates over the federal budget deficit, Medicare's affordability, and the expansion of private health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. This article provides evidence that people with employer-sponsored coverage were more likely than Medicare beneficiaries to forgo needed care,...