Although HSAs were legislated through a federal initiative, the availability of qualifying high-deductible health coverage depends partly on states. As the primary regulators of health insurance, states can choose whether to allow insurance companies to sell high-deductible policies. This issue brief covers the key issues that state officials need to know about HSAs—including what they are, how...

WHEN ASKED WHO PAYS FOR HEALTH CARE IN THE United States, the usual answer is “employers, government, and individuals.” Most Americans believe that employers pay the bulk of workers’ premiums and that governments pay for Medicare, Medicaid, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and other programs. However, this is incorrect. Employers do not bear the cost of employment-based in...

The essays in this volume concentrate heavily on "managed competition," which is merely a particular form of controlling the flow of funds from an insurance pool to the providers of health care. By contrast, this essay emphasizes the funneling of money into the insurance fund. It is argued inter alia that American business has been a quite unreliable partner in the financing of American health ...

BACKGROUND With the increased range of medical insurance coverage in China, the proportion of medical expenditure shouldered by individuals is declining. The problem is the rapidly growing scale of medical expenditures challenges the sustainability of medical insurance funds. METHODS This study used the Heckman selection model, survival analysis, and ordered probit model to evaluate the effec...

INTRODUCTION In the majority of developing countries, the volume of medical insurance services, provided by social insurance organizations is inadequate. Thus, supplementary medical insurance is proposed as a means to address inadequacy of medical insurance. Accordingly, in this article, we attempted to provide the context for expansion of this important branch of insurance through identificati...

This paper focuses on the switching behaviour of sickness fund enrolees in the Swiss health insurance system. Even though the new Federal Law on Social Health Insurance (LAMal) was implemented in 1996 to promote competition among health insurers in basic insurance, there still remains large premium variations within cantons. This indicates that competition has not been able so far to lead to a ...

OBJECTIVES To assess the relationship between insurance status and type of service received among dentate adults in a developing oral health care system. METHODS A cross-sectional survey based on phone interviews in Tehran, Iran. Four trained interviewers collected data using a structured questionnaire. Of 1,531 subjects answering the phone call, 224 were <18 years; of the remaining 1,307, 22...

BACKGROUND Private health insurance has been a major focus of Commonwealth Government health policy for the last decade. Over this period, the Howard government introduced a number of policy changes which impacted on the take up of private health insurance. The most expensive of these was the introduction of the private health insurance rebate in 1997, which had an estimated cost of $3 billion ...

The 30 percent health insurance rebate is popular. Both major political parties are committed to it. However, merely pump priming health funds will not guarantee that essential private services remain available to relieve the pressures on public hospitals. It is time for a more interventionist role by government to ensure essential private hospital services remain affordable and accessible for ...