Please and Ch Summary. — Regarding scholarship on the political determinants of inequality, little attention has been paid to policy implementation. We examine the 2004 Chilean health reforms that sought to regulate private insurers, and measure their effects on gender and age inequality. We find that reforms intended to decrease these inequalities largely failed. Analysis of this failure demon...

These reforms have also been affected by changes in national and international allocation of resources to the health sector, the attribution of responsibility for health, and the increasing commodification of health in almost all countries [2]. Policy changes, some progressive, others retrogressive, wide-ranging biomedical and social research, and efforts to improve sexual and reproductive heal...

Background One of the main objectives of health systems is the financial protection against out-of-pocket (OOP) health expenditures. OOP health expenditures can lead to catastrophic payments, impoverishment or poverty among households. In Iran, health sector evolution plan (HSEP) has been implemented since 2014 in order to achieve universal health coverage and reduce the OOP health expenditures...

School finance reform in Michigan involved centralization (at the state level) of spending decisions about schools, a large tax shift (mostly from property to sales), and a small tax cut. The changes came about after two decades of failed attempts to reduce property taxes in the state, and were the immediate result of an unlikely piece of legislation that abolished all funding for public school...

The funding of population-based public health services (health protection, health promotion and disease prevention) has received little attention in the international literature on health reforms, and yet these services are of fundamental importance to the health of populations and to the economy. This article provides justification for health policy-makers placing more emphasis on the level of...

BACKGROUND Eighty per cent of Malawi's 8 million children live in rural areas, and there is an extensive tiered health system infrastructure from village health clinics to district hospitals which refers patients to one of the four central hospitals. The clinics and district hospitals are staffed by nurses, non-physician clinicians and recently qualified doctors. There are 16 paediatric special...

BACKGROUND The 'resource readiness' of health facilities to provide effective services is captured in the structure component of the classical Donabedian paradigm often used for assessment of the quality of care in the health sector. Periodic inventories are commonly used to confirm the presence (or absence) of equipment or drugs by physical observation or by asking those in charge to indicate ...

An efficient Telehealth system for Tonga is currently but a dream. The kingdom of Tonga consists of 36 inhabited islands occupying 669 kms2 and a population of 97,784 (1996). There is a referral hospital in the Capital and three other district hospitals, 14 peripheral health centres, 32 maternal child health clinics and eight general practitioners. Within the kingdom the use of the telephone, t...

a University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA b Ghana Health Service, Sekyere Kumawu District Health Directorate, Kumawu, Ghana c Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Science and Technology School of Medical Sciences, Kumasi, Ghana d Ghana Health Service, Bosomtwe District Health Directorate, Bosomtwe, Ghana e Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan Sc...

There has been an international trend over the past two decades to encourage more competition in health care by introducing market-related reforms, particularly in countries where health care is publicly financed and provided. Such reforms have included developing competition between providers; competition between insurers; the regulation of prices; greater information and choice for patients; ...