German health care financing is now at the crossroads of fundamental reform. The two main proposals that the new “grand” coalition government must take as its starting point for compromise could hardly be more polarized. The proposal favored by the left, the Bürgerversicherung, a Citizens’ Health Insurance that is compulsory for all, would introduce a new system of proportional taxation, based ...

This paper presents further international comparisons of progressivity of health care financing systems. The paper builds on the work of Wagstaff et al. [Wagstaff, A., van Doorslaer E., et al., 1992. Equity in the finance of health care: some international comparisons, Journal of Health Economics 11, pp. 361-387] but extends it in a number of directions: we modify the methodology used there and...

Can public campaign financing produce meaningful gains in competition within state legislative elections? A number of studies have confronted this question by employing a multitude of analytical techniques. This analysis adds to that body of work by taking a comparative approach that utilizes two distinct measures of competition in order to gauge the success of six different public financing pr...

Although Canada and the United States have fundamentally different systems for financing health care, there are many similarities between the two countries in their approaches to physician payment. The similarities have increased recently with the adoption of the Medicare fee schedule. Canadian provinces have been using fee schedules for more than 20 years. This article provides an overview of ...

A case study examines the Nigerian effort to finance their communication industry. The study revealed that except during the period 1981-85, planned public investment in the communication sector has been moderately high at a level of 6.1% of aggregate ex ante expenditure. For the period 1960-80, actual communications expenditure as a ratio of actual total expenditure was lower at an average o...

BACKGROUND Inadequate access to mental health (MH) services in Lebanon, where prevalence is noteworthy, is a concern. Although a multitude of factors affects access to services, lack of financial coverage of MH services is one that merits further investigation. AIM OF THE STUDY This study aims at providing a systematic description of MH financing systems with a special focus on Lebanon, prese...

OBJECTIVES The impact of donors, such as national government (bi-lateral), private sector, and individual financial (philanthropic) contributions, on domestic health policies of developing nations has been the subject of scholarly discourse. Little is known, however, about the impact of global financial initiatives, such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, on policies a...

Converse selection is the phenomenon commonly existing in the market, and its connotation is the asymmetry of information. Converse selection influences the trading between two or among above two different individuals or enterprises. Enterprise financing comes down to the trading between at least two different enterprises such as the financing party and the loan party, i.e. the behavior of conv...

In this article, we highlight key considerations for better addressing sexual and reproductive health and rights issues within universal health coverage (UHC), particularly in the context of the post-2015 sustainable development agenda. We look at UHC as a health, development and health care financing issue, and its history. We discuss its limitations as currently understood from a human rights...

Numerous reports have documented the problems of adequate insurance coverage. Among them, a 2004 report of the Center for Rural Affairs entitled Health Care in Rural America outlines the parameters of the problem for rural citizens. This report continues the discussion by examining some recent research that delves into the causes and consequences of inadequate health care financing in rural areas.