This policy brief aims to summarise evidence and discuss various concerns about charging user fees from a low-income perspective.

Health economics is increasingly recognized as a discipline that has much to offer developing countries in addressing these problems, but how can it help? What economic concepts and tools can be applied to the health sector? A wider understanding of the discipline is required if it is to support...

People in poor countries live shorter lives than people in rich countries so that, if we scale income by some index of health, there is more inequality in the world than if we consider income alone. Such international inequalities in life expectancy decreased for many years after 1945, and the...

Hospitals are an important component of the healthcare delivery system. Over the years, India has experienced a significant increase in the number iof hospital beds to meet the growing health demands of its poopulalation. Most of this growth has been experienced in the small sized private...

Government healthcare expenditures have been growing much more rapidly than GDP in OECD countries. For example, between 1970 and 2002 these expenditures grew 2.3 times faster than GDP in the U.S., 2.0 times faster than GDP in Germany, and 1.4 times faster than GDP in Japan. How much of...

The budget 2006-07 proposals in health care fell well short of India’s march towards achieving Millennium Development Goals(MDGs), the National Health Policy (NHP) goals and fully operationalising the National Rural Health Mission. Two questions still remain: (a) when will the urban bias...