Introduction The Benchmarks of Fairness framework was conceived in the United States of America at the beginning of the 1990s to evaluate planned health insurance reforms. It is now used to evaluate the fairness of health sector reforms (Daniels et al. 2000, 2005) and several developing countries have already used it to strengthen their capacity to assess health-care reforms. In the context of ...

The impact of conflict on population health and health infrastructure has been well documented; however the efforts of the international community to rebuild health systems in post-conflict periods have not been systematically examined. Based on a review of relevant literature, this paper develops a framework for analyzing health reform in post-conflict settings, and applies this framework to t...

Human resources are the most important assets of any health system, and health workforce problems have for decades limited the efficiency and quality of Latin America health systems. World Bank-led reforms aimed at increasing equity, efficiency, quality of care and user satisfaction did not attempt to resolve the human resources problems that had been identified in multiple health sector assess...

is concerned with the development of health systems based on primary health care. Its support to countries is organized through three sub-programmes, reflecting the different levels and approaches necessary in implementing an integrated primary health care strategy. The sub-prograrnmes are: National Health Systems and Policies; The Current Concerns series is intended to give a wider audience to...

This article identifies the impact of managed-care reforms on the utilization of medical services within the military health-services system. The data come from a recent demonstration project that substituted an HMO and PPO for traditional FFS arrangements. Results from a semiparametric model indicate that the generosity of benefits in the HMO increased demand for ambulatory services. Unlike...

The objectives of this paper are to review the monetary and financial sector reforms in India, identify the emerging issues and explore the prospects for further reform. The first part is devoted to a brief background on the need for reforms taken up in 1991-92. The second part is devoted to the institutional aspects of the reform. Issues relating to ownership, competition and regulation in the...

BACKGROUND As part of its ongoing healthcare reform, the Hong Kong Government introduced a voucher scheme, intended for encouraging older patients to use primary healthcare services in the private sector, thereby, reducing burden on the overwhelmed public sector. The voucher program is also considered one of the strategies to further develop the public private partnership in healthcare, a polic...

The introduction of mandatory health insurance in developing countries is often questioned because of the difficulties in enrolling self-employed workers, who represent an increasingly large segment of the labor force. Partial population coverage coupled with adverse selection effects raise serious concerns about the financial viability of social health insurance schemes. Despite these difficul...

Historically, state mental health authorities have dominated public mental health services, operating with fixed resources and responsible for a large population. A good public mental health system has many of the attributes of a well-managed private mental health system. Unfortunately, public systems are not flexible enough to contract creatively with multiple providers; they lack many of the ...

This analysis of the Belarusian health system reviews the developments in organization and governance, health financing, healthcare provision, health reforms and health system performance since 2008. Despite considerable change since independence, Belarus retains a commitment to the principle of universal access to health care, provided free at the point of use through predominantly state-owned...