Out-of-pocket payments (OOPs) are direct (at the point of service) financial contributions or co-payments by patients and their families associated with consumption of medical products (such as medicines) and/or services. They can be formal as well as informal payments. Together with taxation,...

This study, done at the request of the Hungarian government, presents evidence on cost-sharing in the health sector, and its application in Hungary. It presents results on the impact of cost-sharing on revenues in health facilities and insurance, financial sustainability, informal payments,...

For humanitarian reasons and the concern for households' economic and health security, the health sector is at the center of global development policy. Developing countries and the international community are scaling up health systems to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and are...

In 1997, the Ministry of Health and Population (MOHP) of the Government of Egypt (GOE) launched a comprehensive Health Sector Reform Program (HSRP) aiming to develop a national health system, based on social insurance that would address existing problems in equity, access, efficiency, quality...

Vietnam's successes in the health sector are legendary. Its rates of infant and under-five mortality are comparable to those of countries with substantially higher per capita incomes. Vietnam continues to be an over-achiever in the health sector according to data assembled in this book. Like...

This report examines three critically important areas to inform discussions on the appropriate level of health care spending in the Russian Federation: (i) the efficiency of spending on health care services; (ii) distributional impacts of spending on health care services; and (iii) the key...