Healthcare payment systems influence to a great extent the hospitals' investment decision and thereby, their ability to treat patients. A payment system is optimal provided it incentivises hospitals to undertake an investment level that is appropriate, when considering treatment costs, patients'...

Background: Ensuring access to health services for all is the main goal of universal health coverage (UHC) plan. Out-of-pocket (OOP) payment still remains the main source of funding for healthcare in Bangladesh. The association between barriers to accessing healthcare and over-reliance on OOP...

In the programming period 2007-2013, the European Structural and Investment Fund (ESIF) invested €237 million in Slovak hospitals. We investigate whether this injection of additional funds has improved the quality of healthcare in the targeted hospitals. As a measure of quality, we use the...

Background: Public providers in Jordan are facing increasing health demands due to human crises. This study aimed to benchmark the unit costs of hospital services in public providers in Jordan to provide insights into the outlook for public health care costs. Methods: The unit costs of hospital...

We examine the effect of venture capital investments on health sector growth, using a macro sample data from EVCA (now Invest Europe), World Bank, OECD and Eurostat databases covering 23 EU/EEA countries between 2000 and 2019. We follow the system GLS fixed effect and random effect approach,...

A lack of timely financing for purchases of vaccines and other health products impeded the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on analysis of contract signature and delivery dates in COVID-19 vaccine advance purchase agreements, this paper finds that 60-75 percent of the delay in...

Achieving universal health coverage (UHC) is a top global priority, and nutrition actions are a critical part of meeting that goal. When delivered within key windows of opportunity to improve health throughout the life-course, essential nutrition actions play an important role in reducing the...

Background: The Nigeria's National Health Insurance Scheme aimed at making health care accessible and affordable since it's became operational in 2005. However, many Nigerians still pay out of pocket for medical expenses, and this drive them to incurring catastrophic health expenditures....

Background: Improvements in the financing of healthcare services are important for developing countries like India to make progress towards universal health coverage. Inpatient-care contributes to a big share of total health expenditure in India. India has a mixed health-system with a sizeable...

Der Risikostrukturausgleich (RSA) in der gesetzlichen Krankenversicherung (GKV) ist ein "lernendes System" - seit seiner Einführung durch das Gesundheitsstrukturgesetz (GSG) von 1992 ist er mehrfach umfassend reformiert worden. Das GKV-FKG von 2020 sieht vor, dass er regelmäßig auf...

Background: Regardless of its form, financing health in isolation will never raise sufficient funds to lead to universal health coverage. Achieving this goal which is not a pure health policy, requires multisectoral collaboration to support financing mechanisms. Within this framework, the World...

Background: Direct and time costs of accessing and using health care may limit health care access, affect welfare loss, and lead to catastrophic spending especially among poorest households. To date, limited attention has been given to time and transport costs and how these costs are distributed...

Demands for ramping up health expenditures are at an all-time high. Countries' needs for additional health resources include responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, closing gaps in achieving the Sustainable Development Goal in health in most emerging and developing countries, and serving an ageing...

Background: Health insurance is among the healthcare financing reforms proposed to increase the available healthcare resources and to decrease the risk of household financial crisis. Recently, Ethiopia has been implementing community-based health insurance which mainly targets the very large...

Last month, the Chancellor set out additional funding for the National Health Service (NHS) in the Autumn Statement. This came alongside the promise of new recovery plans and targets for emergency care and primary care, a recommitment to the elective recovery plan, and a promise of a...

Health security has gained importance in the face of COVID-19. It has demanded a relook at the country's preparedness and response capacities and the need for sustainable financing for health security. Addressing these issues has become more imperative when comprehended in the context of...

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa, by area. The country has a long history of conflict, political upheaval, and instability and has a very high poverty rate despite its abundance of natural resources. Mortality and fertility rates in DRC are...

Informal payments in the public health care system represent one of the most sensitive topics in the medical world. It is also a subject of interest for many researchers. As evidenced by reports from various European institutions, a catalyst for their use was the COVID-19 pandemic. Among all the...

Background: Achieving equity in healthcare services has been a global priority. According to the literature, a slew of initiatives aimed at increasing household equity in healthcare fnancing have exacerbated the problem, making it hard for most developing countries to understand the real cause...

Background: Pharmaceutical expenditure grow strongly in most health care systems. Especially high prices of new drugs are perceived to be driver of growth which might threaten the sustainability of financing drugs. Objective: The study aims to analyse a) whether German health policies can...

Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) have been controversially debated as an alternative healthcare financing mechanism since the 1970s. Only a few countries adopted MSAs (to different extents) within their healthcare system, e.g. Singapore, China, South Africa, and the US. Proponents argue that MSAs...

BackgroundHealth expenditures are a major financial burden for many persons in low and middle-income countries. Almost a third of the total deaths globally in 2016 were caused by cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). Studies suggest that the total deaths and the disease burden attributable to CVDs in...

Health is a fundamental condition for human development in a country. In Bangladesh, the share of government expenditure on healthcare has been declining for several consecutive years, resulting in several burdensome problems. The purpose of the paper is to analyze the trend of budget allocation...

Several recent proposals have advocated using the income tax system to collect user fees to help fund the health care system. While there is a considerable amount of research investigating both how individuals respond to tax incentives for employer provided health insurance and on the effects of...

We evaluate the effectiveness of a reform to contain health-care costs by restraining general practitioners' (GP) ability to prescribe outpatient treatments, on the basis of strict appropriateness criteria. Using register data for a large Metropolitan area in Italy, we find a significant...

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a double shock - health and economic. As of March 1, 2021, COVID-19 has cost more than 2.5 million lives and triggered an economic recession surpassing any economic downturn since World War II. Part I of this paper explores the impact of this current...