Market-based health care reform during democratic transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina was complicated by the 1992-1995 war, that devastated the country and greater part of its health care infrastructure. The course of the transition and consequences of war for the health system and health professionals are presented here from the perspective of the author. The description of real-life situatio...

n announcing his health reform plan on September 22, 1993, President Bill Clinton spoke of six overarching principles: securi ty , savings, qual i ty , implicity, choice, and responsibility. You can be sure that all these key words have tested well in polling and focus groups. Throughout the coming months, political language will be critical in shaping the debate. Since healthcare reform is suc...

Background: At present, Israel’s mental health system functions separately from its physical health system in terms of financing, planning, organization and practice setting. The government is responsible for the provision of mental health care, while the country’s four, competing, non-profit health plans are responsible for physical health care. A reform effort is underway to transfer legal re...

The debate over comprehensive health care reform is at a critical juncture. Fact and fiction are becoming increasingly blurred as the debate moves into the public arena. As the sponsors and purchasers of the bulk of group health plans in America, employers will play an important role in the eventual solution. The status quo is not an option for American business, and meaningful reform must addr...

The central role that employers play in financing health care is a distinctive feature of the U.S. health care system, and the provision of health insurance through the workplace has important implications well beyond its role as a source of health care financing. In this paper, we consider the "goodness of fit" of employer-sponsored health insurance (ESI) in the current economic and health ins...

In 2006, Massachusetts passed health care reform legislation designed to achieve nearly universal coverage through a combination of insurance market reforms, mandates, and subsidies that later served as the model for national reform. Using data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, we provide evidence that health care reform in Massachusetts led to better overall self-assessed he...

forest and colleagues have persuasively made the case that policy capacity is a fundamental prerequisite to health reform. they offer a comprehensive life-cycle definition of policy capacity and stress that it involves much more than problem identification and option development. i would like to offer a canadian perspective. if we define health reform as re-orienting the health system from acut...

Access to medical care is a central concern to U.S. policymakers and those interested in health care reform. Wide disparities in access by poverty status and health insurance status are of special importance. This Statistical Brief describes trends in access to health care through the period between 1996-2006 using data from the Household Component of the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS-...

Introduction: The history of case mix implementation in most of western countries during the 90s has been associated with several healthcare reforms, information technology development and managerial innovation in very different ways. Material and Method: We analyse the links between 4 different points in 10 countries: Australia, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Portugal, The N...

The cost of the U.S. health care system is high and rising at unsustainable rates, and a growing number of Americans has inadequate health insurance or none at all. The American public has a right to expect all Presidential candidates to address the overall problem of rising costs and decreasing financial access to care. But it also should expect candidates to address certain specific health sy...