South Korea is one of the world's most rapidly industrializing countries. Along with industrialization has come universal health insurance. Within the span of 12 years, South Korea went from private voluntary health insurance to government-mandated universal coverage. Since 1997, with the intervention of the International Monetary Fund, Korean national health insurance (NHI) has experienced def...

PRIVATE consumer expenditures for medical care amounted to almost. $22 billion in 1962. Approximately $14 billion, or 66 percent of t,he total, represented direct payments by consumers ; the remaining $8 billion was in the form of payments for health insurance. The aggregate amount of the increase from 1961 was almost $1.2 billion or 5.8 percent. Direct payments rose only 2.2 percent, and healt...

The implementation of a universal health insurance (UHI) model is a key political policy in Ireland. The objective here was to determine the understanding of general practitioners (GPs) and patients regarding UHI, its implementation and impact on both sets of stakeholders. Postal questionnaire to GPs, and opportunistic survey sampling of patients in two different GP practices were carried out. ...

In Germany, employees are generally obliged to participate in the public health insurance system, where coverage is universal, co-payments and deductibles are moderate, and premia are based on income. However, they may buy private insurance instead if their income exceeds the compulsory insurance threshold. Here, premia are based on age and health, individuals may choose to what extent they are...

The politics of American health insurance is a struggle over which vision of distributive justice should govern: the solidarity principle or the logic of actuarial fairness. Actuarial fairness is central to American private health insurance. It is both an antiredistributive ideology and a method of organizing mutual aid by fragmenting communities into ever-smaller, more homogeneous groups, lead...

Thailand has a universal multi-payer system with two main types of health insurance: National Health Security Office or public health insurance and private insurance. National health insurance is designed for people who are not eligible to be members of any employment-based health insurance program. Although private health insurance is also available, all Thai citizens are required to be enroll...

as social health is a condition-driven, dynamic and fluid concept, it seems necessary to construct and obtain a national and relevant concept of it for every society. providing an empirical back up for iran's concept of social health was the aim of the present study.this study is an ecologic study in which available data for 30 provinces of iran in 2007 were analyzed. in order to prove construc...

Many states have worked tirelessly over the past two years to develop health insurance exchanges and prepare for the expansion of their Medicaid programs in order to meet the requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Programs to expand coverage, however, do not necessarily ensure seamlessness for many individuals who are likely to experience shifts in program eligibility d...