Two key health reform bills in the House of Representatives and Senate include the option of a "public plan" as an additional source of health coverage. At least initially, the plan would primarily be structured to cover many of the uninsured and those who now have individual coverage. Because it is possible, and perhaps even likely, that this new public payer would pay less than private payers...

Following the footsteps of most other states, Massachusetts opened its Office of Patient Protection in January 2001. Established under what the media hailed as a “landmark” patients’ bill of rights, the Massachusetts legislature created a state agency empowered to review medical decisions made by health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that are challenged by patients. However, after opening its...

pany’s value-based design initiative.1 Pitney Bowes became the first company in the United States to fully implement this approach, in which the employer sets the amount of cost-sharing for a medical service or treatment according to the value of the intervention rather than its cost. Concurrently, Fendrick and colleagues introduced the value-based insurance concept in the peer-reviewed researc...

BACKGROUND In 2001, Canada Health Infoway unveiled a plan to implement a national system of interoperable electronic health records. This government-funded corporation introduced a novel model for interprovincial/territorial collaboration to establish core aspects of a national framework. Despite this $1.6 billion initiative, Canada continues to lag behind other Western countries in adopting el...

BACKGROUND Mental health system reform is urgently needed in Gaza to respond to increasing mental health consequences of conflict. Evidence from mental health systems research is needed to inform decision-making. We aimed to provide new knowledge on current mental health policy and legislation, and services and resource use, in Gaza to identify quality gaps and areas for urgent intervention. ...

From 1997 to 1999, the Chilean Ministry of Health conducted studies on the health care networks in each of the country's 13 regions in order to help plan regional health sector development and define investment projects. Health insurance coverage displayed major geographic, age, and gender variations. Out-patient and in-patient medical care in the public sector showed substantial geographic var...

There has been much interest in China and abroad in the Chinese health care system and its legal system. To date, however, there has not been adequate study tying legal reform and health care reform in China. This paper seeks to bridge those disciplines by studying, for many reasons, the most crucial aspect of the Chinese health care system: the primary care system. The author examines herein r...