In the absence of health insurance, households have to self-insure against the risk of ill health, which may involve the use of mechanisms that have long-term consequences. This study analyses whether Mexican households are able to smooth consumption after severe health shocks, as well as the...

The Affordable Care Act included a provision to eliminate the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap. The policy was phased in by gradually diminishing the gap each year between 2011-2020. This provides a natural experiment to conduct an in-depth study of how the policy affected medication use,...

Objective: To study how changes in insurance benefit design affect medication use of older adults with mental disorders.Data sources: US Medicare claims data from 2007 to 2018.Study Design: We focus on the gradual elimination of the Medicare prescription drug coverage gap beginning in 2011, and...

Governments in many low- and middle-income countries are developing health insurance products as a complement to tax-funded, subsidized provision of health care through publicly operated facilities. This paper discusses two rationales for this transition. First, health insurance would boost...

We report on a large randomized controlled trial of hospital insurance for above-poverty-line Indian households. Households were assigned to free insurance, sale of insurance, sale plus cash transfer, or control. To estimate spillovers, the fraction of households offered insurance varied across...

Innovation is part idea generation and part development. We build a model of "innovating-by-doing," whereby ideas come to practitioners. Successful innovation requires that practitioners' ideas be developed through costly effort. Our model nests existing theories of laboratory research and...

The Extended Medicare Safety Net (EMSN) in Australia was designed to provide financial assistance to patients with high out-of-pocket (OOP) costs for medical treatment. The EMSN works on a calendar year basis. Once a patient incurs a specified amount of OOP costs, the EMSN provides additional...

We examine economic vulnerability to illness when, as for informal sector workers in Thailand, there is universal coverage for health care but earnings losses are uninsured. Even with comprehensive health care entitlement, severe illness that strikes an initially healthy worker is found to raise...

Achieving universal health coverage, including financial risk protection and access to quality essential health-care services, is one of the main Sustainable Development Goals. In low-income countries, innovative and affordable health financing systems are key to realize these goals. This paper...

This study explores the determinants and characteristics of the out-of-pocket to capacity to pay and catastrophic health expenditures in Turkey using a detailed micro-level survey, the Household Budget Survey during the period 2002-2011. The results show that those who have public health...