With the election of President Donald Trump, no domestic policy is a bigger target for change than the Affordable Care Act (ACA), former President Obama's signature health insurance law. His very first executive order, signed within hours of being inaugurated, was aimed at rolling back parts of...

Despite some relative improvements in the last fifteen years, the National Health Service remains an international laggard in terms of those health outcomes that can be attributed to the healthcare system. In international comparisons of health system performance, the NHS almost always ranks in...

Medical and nursing care have been separated from social care by deliberate design since the creation of the NHS. This divide is now entirely artificial. People spend less time in hospital than used to be the case and 4 million people over the age of 65 have a life-limiting illness. In such...

Health systems in Western countries are plagued by inefficiency and will likely require a substantial increase in the tax burden as populations age. Patients might also face a gradual decrease in the quality and scope of services. The organisational changes needed to drive costs down and...

This paper compares health care systems. It looks beyond normal academic, political, or journalistic rhetoric, by exactly sticking to facts, i.e. empirical data (in particular data provided by the WHO) and comprehensive case study analyses. The paper finds that a number of myths and common...

In efforts to decrease emergency department (ED) crowding and health care costs, frequent users of ED services have been targeted for interventions to decrease their utilization. Previous studies have had different definitions for frequent users and have considered all frequent users as a...

The paper explores the role that Social Health Insurance (SHI), as an organisational mechanism for raising and pooling additional funds, can play in financing health services in India. It formulates an SHI concept and its aims for India and examines case studies of different countries that have...

In this article, we discuss the public health provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). We first set forth a framework to identify the key reforms that are needed for a robust public health system. These include workforce and infrastructure investments. We then assess...

Although President Obama and the Democratic Congress were able to pass landmark health legislation, their efforts to reform health care ran into predictable political roadblocks. In a severe recession, taxing business and labor is obviously not helpful to economic recovery. Moreover, an array of...

Germany’s healthcare system is praised as one of the best in the world. In this article, we review Germany’s health system by critically analysing its structure, funding, resource allocation, provider payments, efficiency, health outcomes, and access. Whilst health provision and access are...