Despite the increasing interest in universal health care, little is known about the optimal way to finance, design, and implement it. This paper attempts to fill this gap by providing some general policy recommendations on this important issue. While most of the paper addresses the Eastern...

With much healthcare publicly funded, Hong Kong's rapidly aging population will significant raise fiscal pressure over coming decades. We ask what the implications are of meeting these costs by public funding, or private funding voluntarily or through mandates. Our simulations suggest that...

Economic Transition and Health Care Reform: The Experience of Europe and Central Asia

This primer aims to provide IMF macroeconomists with the essential information they need to address issues concerning health sector policy, particularly when they have significant macroeconomic implications. Such issues can also affect equity and growth and are fundamental to any strategy of...

The aim of the report is to review existing approaches and available policy options to improve access to health care services and financial protection against health shocks for informal-sector workers (ISWs). Along with their families, ISWs represent the majority of the population in many...

Das englische National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) wird in der bundesdeutschen Diskussion um die Reform der Institutionen zur Konkretisierung des Leistungskatalogs in der GKV entweder als Vorbild oder als abschreckendes Beispiel genannt. Die Analyse der von NICE angewandten...

The Employed Program of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation (PhilHealth) caters to those in the formal sector. Included are those in the government and private sectors with a formal employer-employee relationship. Coverage levels for both the government and private sectors are promising...

The Individually Paying Program (IPP) is the voluntary component of the Philippines' social health insurance program. The program caters to those in the informal sector and those without a formal employer-employee relationship. Coverage levels for the IPP were found to be considerably low with a...

The study assesses the experience of three Asian countries: China, Thailand, and Vietnam in the pursuit of universal health coverage (UHC) of their social health insurance schemes. It seeks to analyze a set of domains including membership fees, services, benefits, equity, among others, relative...

The PhilHealth Customer Assistance, Relations and Empowerment Staff (CARES) project was launched in 2012 to help members and their families navigate the complex Filipino health care system. The study assesses the design and quality of implementation of the PhilHealth CARES project in selected...