This paper examines some of the key features of social health insurance systems by drawing on experiences in Germany, Switzerland, France and The Netherlands. These countries have all implemented a variety of reforms, including some competition between health insurers in order to meet some of...

Purpose – The study aims to examine the socio‐economic determinants of maternal health services utilization in Ghana. Design/methodology/approach – Probit and ordered probit models are employed in this study. Findings – The results generally indicate that most women in Ghana undertake...

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...

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....