The authors examine the effects of the introduction of Vietnam's health insurance (VHI) program on health outcomes, health care utilization, and non-medical household consumption. The use of panel data collected before and after the insurance program's introduction allows them to eliminate any...

This paper outlines a strategy for financing health services in sub-Saharan Africa. The individual components of the strategy are as follows: general tax revenues, international finance, a system of user charges, community finance, health insurance, and contributions from nongovernmental...

As part of the recent health reform effort, the government of Georgia launched a Medical Assistance Program in June 2006 to provide health insurance to its poor population. So far the program covers slightly over 50 percent of the poor and provides benefit coverage for outpatient and inpatient...

This paper reviews the correlations and potential links between health and economic growth and summarizes the evidence on the role of government in improving health status. At the macroeconomic level, the evidence of an impact of health on growth remains ambiguous due both to difficulties in...

India spends 6 percent of its GDP on health-three times the amount spent by Indonesia and twice that of China-and spending on non-chronic morbidities is three times that of chronic illnesses. It is normally assumed that the high spending on non-chronic illnesses reflects the prevalence of...

Financial crisis is a common state of affairs in the government health sector of many developing countries, and an increasing number are considering implementing user charges and insurance programs to shift some of the financial burden for health services away from direct budget allocations by a...

The post-communist transition to social health insurance in many of the Central and Eastern European and Central Asian countries provides a unique opportunity to try to answer some of the unresolved issues in the debate over the relative merits of social health insurance and tax-financed health...

Health systems are not just about improving health: good ones also ensure that people are protected from the financial consequences of receiving medical care. Anecdotal evidence suggests health systems often perform badly in this respect, apparently with devastating consequences for households,...

The health systems of Japan and the Asian Tigers--Hong Kong (China), the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (China)--and the recent reforms to them provide many potentially valuable lessons to East Asia's developing countries. All five systems have managed to keep a check on health...

All countries - whether industrial, developing, or in transition to a market economy - are interested in health care reform. A central focus of reform everywhere is to make patients more responsive to health care costs without diluting the protection offered by public or private insurance....