Purpose – This paper uses a unique nationwide survey data derived from the 2003 Utilisation of Health Services Survey (UHSS) in Iran ( n =16,935) to analyse inequities of health care utilisation. Design/methodology/approach – Concentration indices are used to measure socioeconomic inequality...

Norman Daniels has presented a concept of health care need which he proposes as the basis for the distribution of health care resources, plausibly to define and provide a philosophical justification for a decent minimum of health care. Daniels′ construction is reconsidered and criticisms both...

The health care crisis in the United States has roots that reach into the nineteenth century. An examination of the cultural, social, and economic roots should warn against piecemeal and short‐range measures to correct a fragmented system which, despite all its achievements, is draining the...

Discusses James Buchanan′s contribution to the important topic of cost‐containment in the area of health care. Historical and ideational in its thrust, it seeks also to make a more general contribution by showing how the methodology of public choice can be applied to a specific issue in...

Professor Modigliani argues that, owing to considerations derived from the model of perfect competition, price controls in general enhance economic welfare and that this applies in particular to health care. Maintains the diametric opposite on both counts: that the perfectly competitive model is...

Draws parallels between the contemporary community hospital and the traditional agricultural commons. Identifies four principal attributes of common field agriculture and matches them to contemporary arrangements in the management of the facilities of the community hospital. Points to several...

The post‐1978 micro‐economic reforms have dismantled China’s community‐funded rural health system, relying on paramedics called “barefoot doctors”. Examines the economic behaviour and incentives of village doctors (formerly “barefoot doctors”) as a response to a deregulated...

Examines the Clinton administration’s health‐care proposal, for a system of national health insurance in the USA. Investigates whether, if it had been implemented, it would have solved healthcare delivery system problems. Goes on to question why it failed to gain the approval of Congress....

The Republic of the Philippines is seeking to expand access to the formal sector of medical care. Concentrates on the alternative ways in which that expansion can be financed. First, provides the background by presenting data on mortality and morbidity as indicators of health status, and of...

In December 1989, the Government of Kenya implemented cost sharing reforms in a substantial portion of public health facilities. In September 1990 the Government suspended registration fees for out‐patient treatments, but reintroduced them in April 1992 after a lapse of a 20‐month period....