Throughout the Truman administration's Fair Deal era, ideas for a national system of publicly financed universal health care were developed, debated, and even proposed in Congress. In spite of public support for health care reform, each legislative proposal that embodied these ideas failed, and...

In 2019, the Bolivian government began implementation of the Universal Health Insurance (SUS) scheme, with critics claiming the unpreparedness of the healthcare system to provide universal and free services. To date, there is no research that assesses the effects of the reform and to what extent...

Background: Thailand achieved universal health coverage (UHC) in 2002 by introducing a tax-financed health insurance scheme, the UHC scheme, to approximately 47 million of Thais. With the comprehensive benefit package and clear objectives in ensuring equitable access to essential health care,...

Canadian provincial healthcare systems fare poorly compared to peer countries according to new research from the C.D. Howe Institute. In “Reality Bites: How Canada's Healthcare System Compares to its International Peers,” authors Colin Busby, Ramya Muthukaran and Aaron Jacobs examine how the...

Recent data show wide disparity between Japan and the United States in the effectiveness of their health care systems. Japan spends close to the lowest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care among OECD countries, the United States spends the highest, yet life expectancies in...

In this article, we discuss the public health provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). We first set forth a framework to identify the key reforms that are needed for a robust public health system. These include workforce and infrastructure investments. We then assess...

This paper presents a set of indicators to assess health care system performance. It also presents new comparative data on health care policies and institutions for OECD countries. This set of indicators allows the empirical characterisation of health care systems and the identification of...