America's health care system is faced with rising costs, quality concerns, and a growing number of people who lack public or private health insurance. Some blame market forces for this state of affairs, arguing that health care is too important for government not to get more involved. A recent book from the Cato Institute-Healthy Competition: Whats Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It-ta...

OBJECTIVE Health insurance provides financial support for health care expenditures. There are two types of health insurance: compulsory and voluntary. Voluntary health insurance can be divided into two categories: self-employed and supplementary. In this study, the main factors that affect the demand for self-employed health insurance in Iran were determined. MATERIALS AND METHODS In this cro...

Although most private health insurance in US is employment-based, little is known about how employers choose health plans for their employees. In this paper, I examine the relationship between employee preferences for health insurance and the health plans offered by employers. I find evidence that employee characteristics affect the generosity of the health plans offered by employers and the li...

OBJECTIVE To assess the Self Employed Women's Association's Medical Insurance Fund in Gujarat in terms of insurance coverage according to income groups, protection of claimants from costs of hospitalization, time between discharge and reimbursement, and frequency of use. METHODS One thousand nine hundred and thirty claims submitted over six years were analysed. FINDINGS Two hundred and fift...

The paper examines the recent reforms of health insurance in Chile and Argentina. These partially replace social health insurance with individual insurance administered through the private sector. In Chile, reforms in the early 1980s allowed private health insurance funds to compete for affiliates with the social health insurance system. In Argentina, reforms in the 1990s aim to open up the uni...

The importance of protecting confidential health care for adolescents and young adults is well documented. State and federal confidentiality protections exist for both minors and young adults, although the laws vary among states, particularly for minors. However, such confidentiality is potentially violated by billing practices and in the processing of health insurance claims. To address this p...

In the 1990s and early 2000s, a number of states passed laws requiring mental health benefits to be included in health insurance coverage. The variation in the characteristics and enactment date of the laws provides an opportunity to measure the impact of increasing access to mental health care on mental health outcomes, as evidenced by state suicide rates. In contrast with previous research, r...