In the current era of the Sustainable Development Goals, many countries are attempting to strengthen their health system and achieving Universal Health Coverage. The Korean National Health Insurance system functions as a core element of health financing, contributing to achieving UHC by promoting public health and social security through insurance benefits for prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, childbirth, and health promotion. The Republic of Korea achieved 100% NHI coverage of the target population (...) in 1989, 12 years after the introduction of the social insurance system. However, poor coverage of health services and lack of financial protection are major obstacles to achieving UHC. Therefore, the Korean government announced and implemented ‘Moon Jae-in Care’ in August 2017 to enhance the coverage rate of NHI by 70%. First, this study reviews the existing health insurance system in Korea from the perspective of health financing and UHC. Second, it analyses ‘Moon Jae-in Care’, based on the main framework of UHC. Third, it considers the ethical implications of these developments, with focus on the principles of equity, fairness, autonomy, and solidarity. Although the NHI reform is expected to propel Korean health care closer to UHC, many ethical, social, and political issues remain. (shrink)

Under the influence of concerns about sustainability, health system reforms have targeted institutional designs and have overlooked the role of socio-political factors like solidarity—a concept that is generally assumed to underpin the redistributive health system. The purpose of this research is to investigate users’ perceptions of the National Health Insurance as a system, their senses of solidarity and their views on the sustainability of the system in Taiwan. Using the descriptive ethics approach, qualitative in-depth interviews (...) were conducted with typical case sampling of 17 participants in the Taipei Metropolitan. The framework approach was used to analyze the interview transcripts. The research finds that despite great differences between users’ perceptions of the NHI, most users could share a notion of mutual relationship among each other. Three types of reasons are used to justify the obligations of mutual aid imposed by the NHI. These reasons are embedded within divergent conceptions of solidarity. The research also finds that government’s performance, the stability of decision-making and users’ personal experiences engaging with the system are important conditions for the users’ supportive attitude toward the system. Solidarity is a plausible concept in sustaining a non-Western social health insurance such as Taiwan’s NHI. (shrink)

The doctor-patient relationship is the foundation of any medical intervention. Over time, the relationship has changed, from the era of paternalism to the era of self-determination or patient autonomy, following changes resulting from consumerism and lately, in South Africa, socialised medicine as a result of the proposed National Health Insurance. The premise of this article is that patient autonomy is invariably limited by a determination of who will carry the cost of a medical intervention. In recent years, (...) legislative developments have affected the understanding of a patient and doctor through the introduction of new references, such as ‘user’, ‘data subject’ and ‘consumer’ for a patient, and ‘service provider’ and ‘responsible party’ for a doctor, each giving different meanings to the doctor-patient relationship. Recent statutory additions also include new remedies available to aggrieved patients as parties in the doctor-patient relationship. The article concludes with brief observations on how the NHI will alter the essence and nature of the doctor-patient relationship in future. (shrink)

Publication date: 15 October 2018 Source: Author: Ehiosun O. Marvel NHIS was launched officially on 6th of June 2005. The Scheme is designed to provide comprehensive health care at affordable costs, covering employees of the formal sector, self-employed, as well as rural communities, the poor and the vulnerable groups. However, client satisfaction of services rendered continues to be a major concern for the improvement of NHIS. This study is designed to determine the level and causes of dissatisfaction of clients (...) accessing NHIS clinic at the Kubwa General Hospital, Kubwa, FCT, Abuja. This study employed a descriptive cross sectional survey. 279 NHIS enrollees were recruited for this study at the Kubwa General Hospital. Questionnaires were administered and the level of dissatisfaction and satisfaction of NHIS services were analyzed. The satisfaction rate was 69.2% while the dissatisfaction rate was 22.9%. The respondents were satisfied with the attitude of health workers in NHIS clinic, Kubwa. However, they were dissatisfied with waiting time, attitude of record officers and those in pharmacy department. This study found that the level of dissatisfaction with NHIS services is high despite a high satisfaction level. The Attitude of health workers may influence the dissatisfaction of enrollees. NHIS is still limited to the formal sector. (shrink)

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the nation's first comprehensive health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Within weeks, twenty states filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of its most politically charged feature—an individual purchase mandate. By 2014, the bill requires most individuals to have health insurance. With certain exceptions (pertaining to income level and religious objections), individuals without qualifying coverage will pay an annual tax penalty. If anything, the tax penalty (...) is too low compared with the cost of insurance, so it may not provide sufficient incentive for healthy individuals to purchase insurance. But it remains controversial because it compels people to purchase coverage they choose not to have, raising the question whether Congress can lawfully and ethically require individuals to contract with, and transfer money to, a private party. (shrink)

Over 1.3 billion people in the world are challenged to access good and cheap healthcare when become ill. Health insurance policies are a fantastic strategy to assist people who can't afford medical care. For middle- and low-income nations, there hasn't been much research on the ability to pay for health insurance for public employees like school teachers. Therefore, this cross-sectional questionnaire based research has been undertaken to explore the reflection of health insurance among 383 (...) Bangladeshi school teachers of 5 divisional city center primary school and were being surveyed online between 1st August to 30th August 2022. According to survey, monthly average (mean) health expenditure of respondents were 7668.93 BDT (Bangladeshi Taka equivalent to $80.72) with 95% confidence interval. Of 35% responders suffered from high blood pressure, approximately 8% people were suffering from arthritis and asthma, 7.8% people have heart disease and 8.1 % people suffer from cholesterol problem. Maximum respondents (80%) agreed that health insurance is burden for them. About 51% teachers had no idea about health insurance. However, there was no significant relation in between educational status and health insurance perception for male and female teacher respondents. Moreover, the comparative data highlighted that more awareness and more exploration might be needed in health insurance perception for primary school teachers. This result can contribute to form people’s choice-oriented health insurance policy. (shrink)

In The Ethics of Universal Health Insurance, Alex Rajczi shows how defenders of universal health insurance can address the ethical issues raised by these objections and make the moral case for an American universal health insurance system that improves on the gains made in the Affordable Care Act.

Lack of health insurance coverage is a large and growing problem for millions of American families. Rising health care costs and economic insecurity continue to threaten the bedrock of the health insurance system - employer-sponsored coverage - while states’ fiscal situations and the escalating federal deficit complicate any efforts at reform. Providing health insurance coverage to the millions of uninsured remains a major health care challenge for the nation and understanding the current (...) health insurance environment, who the uninsured are, and why they are uninsured is critical when considering health care reform. This paper aims to define the problem of the uninsured, providing an overview of the uninsured in America and the roles and limits of private and public insurance. Following this discussion, the paper describes the current health insurance environment and examines the prospects for improving coverage. (shrink)

This paper examines the role that population vulnerabilities play in insurance coverage for a representative sample of Latinos and Asians in the United States. Using data from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS), these analyses compare coverage differences among and within ethnic subgroups, across states and regions, among types of occupations, and among those with or without English language proficiency. Extensive differences exist in coverage between Latinos and Asians, with Latinos more likely to be uninsured. Potential (...) explanations include the type of occupations available to Latinos and Asians, reforms in immigration laws, length of time in the United States, and regional differences in safety-net coverage. Policy implications are discussed. (shrink)

It is an article of almost religious faith in the United Kingdom that the National Health Service is far superior to a competitive market in health care services. In this brief and informal paper I show that the opposite is true. In contrast to market provision, the existence of the National Health Service entails the following. First, consumer sovereignty is virtually destroyed, since what services the consumer receives and how much he pays (through taxation) are (...) determined by the government of the day in consultation with vested and ideological interests. Second, a person may be denied a life-saving service despite having contributed more than his fair share to National Health Service over the course of his working life. Third, people often spend less on health care than they would like to spend, because any additional contributions (via increased taxes) are not linked to any benefit specifically for the person who makes them. Fourth, provision of services free at the point of need which is not linked to what a person pays encourages a wasteful misuse of resources. Fifth, absence of competition between health care providers leads to high cost and poor quality of service and a tendency to produce a standardised service rather than a tailored one; and government attempts to address this problem usually make it worse. Sixth, people’s freedom to engage in particular activities or lifestyles is likely to be curtailed because the costs of those activities are artificially socialised. I also point out that issues of inequality or poverty are much better addressed by means other than a nationalised health service. (shrink)

National attention on issues of public health preparedness necessarily brings into sharp focus the question of how to assure adequate, community-wide health care financing for preventive, acute care, and long-term medical care responses to public health threats. In the U.S., public and private health insurance represents the principal means by which medical care is financed. Beyond the threshold challenge of the many persons without any, or a stable form of, coverage lie challenges related to (...) the structure and characteristics of health insurance itself, particularly the commercial industry and its newly emerging market of consumer-driven health plans. States vary significantly in how they approach the regulation of insurance and in their willingness to support various types of insurance markets. This variation is attributable to the size and robustness of the insurance market, the political environment, and regulatory tradition and custom. Reconciling health insurance markets with public health-related health care financing needs arising from public health threats should be viewed as a major dimension of national health reform. (shrink)

Lack of health insurance coverage is a large and growing problem for millions of American families. Rising health care costs and economic insecurity continue to threaten the bedrock of the health insurance system - employer-sponsored coverage - while states’ fiscal situations and the escalating federal deficit complicate any efforts at reform. Providing health insurance coverage to the millions of uninsured remains a major health care challenge for the nation and understanding the current (...) health insurance environment, who the uninsured are, and why they are uninsured is critical when considering health care reform. This paper aims to define the problem of the uninsured, providing an overview of the uninsured in America and the roles and limits of private and public insurance. Following this discussion, the paper describes the current health insurance environment and examines the prospects for improving coverage. (shrink)

National attention on issues of public health preparedness necessarily brings into sharp focus the question of how to assure adequate, community-wide health care financing for preventive, acute care, and long-term medical care responses to public health threats. In the U.S., public and private health insurance represents the principal means by which medical care is financed. Beyond the threshold challenge of the many persons without any, or a stable form of, coverage lie challenges related to (...) the structure and characteristics of health insurance itself, particularly the commercial industry and its newly emerging market of consumer-driven health plans. States vary significantly in how they approach the regulation of insurance and in their willingness to support various types of insurance markets. This variation is attributable to the size and robustness of the insurance market, the political environment, and regulatory tradition and custom. Reconciling health insurance markets with public health-related health care financing needs arising from public health threats should be viewed as a major dimension of national health reform. (shrink)

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. ACA aims to improve access to care and health outcomes through a number of mechanisms, including requiring most individuals to carry health insurance, prohibiting insurers from denying health insurance coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and creating exchanges through which individuals and families not eligible for employer- or government-sponsored health insurance may purchase coverage. While the Act is aimed (...) primarily at improving individual health by increasing access to health insurance, it also contains a number of provisions targeted directly at improving health at the population level. Most of these provisions, which encompass a variety of disease prevention and access-to-care initiatives, are found in ACA Title IV. (shrink)

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act into law. ACA aims to improve access to care and health outcomes through a number of mechanisms, including requiring most individuals to carry health insurance, prohibiting insurers from denying health insurance coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and creating exchanges through which individuals and families not eligible for employer- or government-sponsored health insurance may purchase coverage. While the Act is aimed (...) primarily at improving individual health by increasing access to health insurance, it also contains a number of provisions targeted directly at improving health at the population level. Most of these provisions, which encompass a variety of disease prevention and access-to-care initiatives, are found in ACA Title IV. (shrink)

In most other nations, insurance for medical care is called sickness insurance, and it covers sick people. In the United States, we have “health insurance,” and its major carriers — commercial insurers, large employers, and increasingly government programs — strive to avoid sick people and cover only the healthy. This perverse logic at the heart of the American health insurance system is the key to reform debates.Focusing on sick people versus healthy people might seem (...) a strange way to view the coverage issue. Most discussions of insurance categorize people into other groupings: the insured versus the uninsured; Caucasian whites versus other racial and ethnic groups; men versus women; poor and low-income people versus everybody else; children, adults, and the elderly; or citizens versus immigrants and undocumented aliens. More recently, health researchers have begun talking about “vulnerable populations,” using most of the same demographic groupings and adding other illness-inducing factors such as social isolation, stress, and impoverished neighborhoods. But as I will show, insurance plans now use premiums, cost-sharing, and other design features in ways that indirectly divide each of these groups into the sick and the healthy, to the detriment of the sick. By shifting the costs of illness onto people who use medical care — that is, sick people — market-oriented reforms of the last few decades have eroded insurance in the name of strengthening it. (shrink)

National attention on issues of public health preparedness necessarily brings into sharp focus the question of how to assure adequate, community-wide health care financing for preventive, acute care, and long-term medical care responses to public health threats. In the U.S., public and private health insurance represents the principal means by which medical care is financed. Beyond the threshold challenge of the many persons without any, or a stable form of, coverage lie challenges related to (...) the structure and characteristics of health insurance itself, particularly the commercial industry and its newly emerging market of consumer-driven health plans. States vary significantly in how they approach the regulation of insurance and in their willingness to support various types of insurance markets. This variation is attributable to the size and robustness of the insurance market, the political environment, and regulatory tradition and custom. Reconciling health insurance markets with public health-related health care financing needs arising from public health threats should be viewed as a major dimension of national health reform. (shrink)

President Bush and his Council of Economic Advisors have claimed that the U.S. shouldn’t adopt a national health program because doing so would slow innovation in health care. Some have attacked this argument by challenging its moral claim that innovativeness is a good ground for choosing between health care systems. This reply is misguided. If we want to refute the argument from innovation, we have to undercut the premise that seems least controversial -- the premise that (...) our current system produces more innovation than a national health program would. I argue that this premise is false. The argument requires clarifying the concept ‘national health program’ and examining various theories of human well-being. (shrink)

Societies have an obligation to ensure that their citizens have access to health care, but there are disagreements over how this system should be structured. The most contentious issue centers on the morality of specific therapies or actions. In this essay, the author examines the influence of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on private employer health plans. He concludes that the Church’s teaching on the inherent dignity and worth of every human life should be the guiding (...) principle for assessing the relative merits of differing approaches to constructing a comprehensive and equitable system for financing and delivering medical care. The patient’s conscience should be primary. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 13.3 (Autumn 2013): 419–426. (shrink)

Using data from the National Hospital Discharge Survey, this paper analyzes the effect of Medicaid eligibility expansions from 1985 to 1996 on the health insurance coverage of women giving birth. We find that the eligibility expansions reduced the proportion of pregnant women who were uninsured by approximately 10%, although the magnitude of this decrease is sensitive to specification. The decrease in the proportion of uninsured pregnant women came at the expense of a substantial reduction in private (...) class='Hi'>insurance coverage (crowd-out) of at least 55%. Substantial crowd-out and the relatively small change in the proportion uninsured suggest that Medicaid eligibility expansions may have had small effects on infant and maternal health. (shrink)

The Ayushman Bharat scheme is a government health insurance program that will cover about 100 million poor and vulnerable families in India providing up to INR 0.5 million per family per year for secondary and tertiary care hospitalization services. In addition, it also proposes to establish 150,000 health and wellness centers all over the country providing comprehensive primary health care. The beneficiaries of the hospital insurance scheme can avail health care services from both public (...) and empanelled private health facilities. This scheme is one of the largest government-sponsored health insurance schemes in the world. Previous experience with government-financed health insurance schemes in India has shown that they are inequitable, inefficient, and do not provide financial protection. There is a lack of clarity on the budgetary provisions over the years when the utilization is likely to increase. The Ayushman Bharat scheme in its current form strengthens the “for profit” private health sector, requiring greater emphasis on its regulation. The scheme, which has primary, secondary, and tertiary care components, places a great focus on the secondary and tertiary care services and requires more investment in comprehensive primary health care. The potential problems of “profit-motivated” supplier-induced demand by private health care providers and corrupt practices are possible ethical burdens of the scheme. For the Ayushman Bharat to meet the ethical principle of justice, it should first address universal coverage of comprehensive primary health care and move on to hospital insurance in a progressive manner. The scheme should have provisions to strictly regulate secondary and tertiary care hospitalization in the private health sector to prevent misuse. It is the ethical responsibility of the government to ensure a strong and robust public health system, but the current provisioning of the Ayushman Bharat scheme does not do this and the reasons for this are explained in this paper. (shrink)

This paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of quantity of health insurance in the context of employer-based health insurance using the micro-level data from the 1987 National Medical Expenditure Survey (NMES). It extends the previous research by including additional factors in the analysis, which significantly affect health insurance offers by employers. This paper emphasizes two determinants of employers’ insurance offer decisions that are particularly relevant: union membership and selfinsured versus not (...) self-insured health plans. The conducted empirical analysis reported in this paper reveals the following predictors of higher health insurance coverage: union membership, not self-insured health plan(s), union membership in Midwest or South, as well as self-insured union membership. Further, other factors such as: age, male, income, for profit and other employer organizational forms, and firm’s size determine a higher level of health insurance. (shrink)

Even Americans who have only a vague knowledge of health policy know that the U.S. is different. We do not have “socialized medicine,” like our European or Canadian neighbors. We believe that health care is not rationed here, and that, unlike citizens of other nations, we do not have to wait in long queues when we need medical care. We believe that U.S. health care is the best in the world.At the same time, the U.S. spends more (...) on health care - both per capita and as percentage of gross domestic product - than other nations do. One in six non-elderly Americans has no health insurance, and voluminous studies show that lack of health insurance has a dramatic effect on both access to care and on health status. Furthermore, on many of the most important indicators of population health, such as infant mortality and life expectancy, the U.S. scores worse than do other nations. (shrink)

There are four basic models for health care systems: the private market insurance model, the national single-payer model, the national health service model, and the social insuranceSocial insurance model. The social justice debate over health care usually focuses on the comparative efficiency and quality of competitive private market insurance and the universal coverage and equity of national health care systems. It is a mistake, however, to think that a universal right (...) to health care services requires a single-payer, government-run, national health care system. The social insurance model of Germany, France, Japan, and many other countries, deserves more attention, as it incorporates the strengths of both market models and national health care models. (shrink)

Even Americans who have only a vague knowledge of health policy know that the U.S. is different. We do not have “socialized medicine,” like our European or Canadian neighbors. We believe that health care is not rationed here, and that, unlike citizens of other nations, we do not have to wait in long queues when we need medical care. We believe that U.S. health care is the best in the world.At the same time, the U.S. spends more (...) on health care - both per capita and as percentage of gross domestic product - than other nations do. One in six non-elderly Americans has no health insurance, and voluminous studies show that lack of health insurance has a dramatic effect on both access to care and on health status. Furthermore, on many of the most important indicators of population health, such as infant mortality and life expectancy, the U.S. scores worse than do other nations. (shrink)

There are four basic models for health care systems: the private market insurance model, the national single-payer model, the national health service model, and the social insurance model. The social justice debate over health care usually focuses on the comparative efficiency and quality of competitive private market insurance and the universal coverage and equity of national health care systems. It is a mistake, however, to think that a universal right to (...) health care services requires a single-payer, government-run, national health care system. The social insurance model of Germany, France, Japan, and many other countries, deserves more attention, as it incorporates the strengths of both market models and national health care models. (shrink)

Compared with data that is initially collected for research purposes, the mandatory authorization of a government database for secondary use deserves greater scrutiny because it consists of information that is collected initially for administrative purposes. Using the case of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) Database as an example, this paper analyzes the ethical issues that emerge when the research participants are “participated” in studies without their consent, according to the current policy. The proponents of secondary use for (...) research purposes maintain that the authorized use of the NHI Database is necessary for public interests, while the opponents argue that the potential lack of democratic accountability and the infringement on people’s rights to privacy and information autonomy is unwarranted. Drawing on the solidarity‐based approach, this paper proposes a temporal solution as a possible reform direction for better ethical justification of the secondary use of the NHI Database. (shrink)

Creating a single national health insurance pool is not likely to destabilize the economy by supplanting the private health insurance industry. This industry insures a relatively small percentage of the population and holds very little of the risk such insurance implies. In effect, insurance companies function as middlemen, bundling risk packages to distribute to other, larger companies and so serve a limited purpose. Were insurers to handle claims for a national pool as (...) they do for the Medicare program, any destabilization to the economy more broadly would be further minimized. (shrink)

This is an important time to focus on the question of insurance discrimination based on health status. The nation once again is poised to embark on a major health care reform debate. Even as the number of uninsured stands at some 45 million persons, millions more may be poised to lose coverage during the worst economic downturn in generations. In addition, a large number of persons may be seriously under-insured, with coverage falling significantly below the cost of (...) necessary health care. In recent years, the proportion of insured persons who are underinsured has grown by 60% since 2003, reaching an estimated 25 million persons in 2007. Health care costs experienced by insured persons now account for more than 75% of all personal bankruptcies related to medical care. Underlying these figures is a national approach to health care financing for the non-elderly that effectively increases the odds that those who are in poor health status will be uninsured or underinsured. (shrink)

The 1948 constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. It was a bold and revolutionary health idea to gain international consensus in a period characterized by fervent anti-communism. This article explores the genealogy of the health definition and demonstrates how it was possible to expand the scope of health, redefine it as ‘well-being’, and overcome (...) ideological resistance to progressive and international health approaches. The first part of the article demonstrates how the health definition was composed through a trajectory of draft ideas from scholars in the history of medicine, as well as political actors working to promote national health insurance. The definition was authored by League of Nations veteran Raymond Gautier, but secretly drew heavily on medical historian Henry E. Sigerist’s controversial book Socialized Medicine in the Soviet Union (1937). The second part analyses how it was possible to resist the ideological pushback against the WHO and secure US ratification. The WHO’s progressive constitution was not simply a deviation from dominant health ideas, but a direct outcome of the entrenched health conflict. The genealogy is based on original archival material from international organizations and US government archives. The article contributes to understandings of the political controversies surrounding the WHO and to scholarship on understandings of health. It also illustrates how influential health ideas cross the boundaries between politics and health sciences, as well as the boundaries between domestic health policy and global health. (shrink)

The AIDS crisis poses a special challenge for American health care, which depends heavily on private insurance to pay medical bills. Can we provide adequate health care to all who need it and still meet the financial requirements of the private health insurance industry? More insurance carriers are turning to antibody testing in order to eliminate poor risks from non‐group, direct‐pay pools. Some cost‐conscious employers have attempted to fire AIDS patients summarily or to exclude (...) AIDS coverage from group insurance policies. Various remedies are available for spreading the financial risks of the epidemic, such as covering persons with AIDS under Medicare or in state‐sponsored health insurance pools. Ethical questions about cost and access may also rekindle the debate about the need for national health insurance. (shrink)

Public insurance is both everywhere and nowhere. It is everywhere in the sense that it is omnipresent in industrialised societies: public health insurance, unemployment benefits and pensions. It is a sizeable part of modern nations’ public budget . It has permeated our understanding of societal institutions to the extent that now access to public insurance coverage is understood as being a struggle for equality and equal citizenship .Public insurance is only one aspect of a broader (...) phenomenon: the transformation of modern societies into insurance societies, i.e. societies that are orientated toward risk-management . Nevertheless, public insurance is at the core of the welfare state as insurance system. Paul Krugman once said of the modern state that it is ‘an insurance company with an army’ while David Moss argues that government is the ultimate risk manager ( .. (shrink)

The emergence of Covid‐19 in the United States has revealed a critical weakness in the health care system in the United States. The majority of people in the nation receive health care via employment‐based health insurance from providers in a competitive market. However, neither employment‐based health care nor a competitive health care market can adequately provide treatment during a global pandemic. Employment‐based health care will fail to provide care for a large number of (...) people in any destabilizing economic event, including a pandemic. Competitive for‐profit health care systems distribute limited goods based on markets rather than health care needs. If a global pandemic results in unusually high demand for specific medical supplies, then these will be distributed suboptimally. The combined risk of suboptimal distribution of needed goods and a significant drop in health care access in a global pandemic indicates that the U.S. health care system has serious vulnerabilities that need to be addressed. (shrink)

Rationale In Belgium, several policies regulating reimbursement of acid suppressant drugs and evidence-based recommendations for clinical practice were issued in a short period of time, creating a unique opportunity to observe their effect on prescribing. Aims and objectives To describe the evolution of prescriptions for acid suppressants and explore the interaction of policies and practice recommendations with prescribing patterns. Method Monthly claims-based data for proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) and H-2-antihistamines by general practitioners, internists and "astroenterologists were obtained from the Belgian (...) national health insurance database (1997-2005). The evolution of reimbursed defined daily doses and expenses after introduction of reimbursement regulations and dissemination of practice recommendations was explored. Results Recommendations had no impact on prescribing. All changes can be related to concomitant policies. Lifting reimbursement restrictions for cheaper products did not control growth or save costs in the Iona term. Only restricting reimbursement of all PPIs managed to curb the growth. We observed an unintended increase of non-omeprazole PPIs by gastroenterologists. Conclusions Reimbursement policies influence prescribing, but their effect can be unintended. A dialogue between policymakers and guideline developers, and evidence-based policies that are linked to clinical guidelines, could be an effective way to pursue both cost-containment and quality of care. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDecisions that influence health and access to health care are necessarily a matter of ethics. This paper attempts to examine current budgetary allocations and policy shifts in India from the perspective of global ethical values. It also describes how global economic processes may increase health inequity nationally and argues that they should, therefore, be subject to global health ethics. Public health in India is in a state of crisis from a disinvestment in public health (...) care services and persistent neglect, simultaneous to the global push to enhance privatization. National health policies have remained oblivious to the unacceptably high inequity in access to health care on the one hand, and the cautionary analysis of the experience with currently chosen solutions through public-private- partnership and insurance models, which further marginalize the poorest. Global institutions such as the World Trade Organisation also influence national policies to benefit global business interests but often with detrimental effect upon equitable access to health and health care. The paper argues that the application of ethics must become more visible in the determination of national policies that are led by the dominant global paradigms of economic development to ensure that equitable access to health is prioritized. (shrink)

The author, a health insurance industry leader and a prominent voice in the national reform debate, shares his perspective on attempts to transform health care over nearly a decade. He advocates for a bipartisan solution to stabilize the health insurance market in the near term, and for private sector innovation in partnership with government to create sustainable long-term change. He encourages ASLME members to continue to lend their expertise to the process of transformation.

The overriding goal of health reform is to provide every American affordable access to adequate health care. Yet in every national effort to date, the focal means to this end has always been health insurance. Massachusetts is congratulated for having achieved nearly universal insurance coverage, and congressional Democrats are aiming for the same. But what if they don't succeed? Even in Massachusetts, 167,000 residents remain uninsured. Is it still possible to provide adequate access to (...) medical care for those without insurance? If so, shouldn't we reframe social goals to achieve universal access through any means possible, whether or not insurance is involved? (shrink)

Through users’ cross-system comparative experience engaging with the health systems in Taiwan and other countries, this article probes into their understandings and value judgments and specifically their reasonings for the ‘solidarity with whom?’ question in the health sector solidarity. With the cross-system comparison approach, the study adopted semi-structured interviews with 30 Taiwanese participants who have studied, lived or worked abroad and engaged with the health system in Canada, the USA or the UK. This approach offers the opportunity (...) for one to evaluate the health system in the home country from a relative viewpoint from the host country. The participants suggested that the boundary of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) should be as inclusive as possible, covering all legal residents in Taiwan regardless of their status, and that the citizens should share more financial responsibility. The ethical reasons for supporting the NHI include recognizing health sector solidarity among people, considering the coverage as a protection of the human right to health, humanitarian reasons and self-interest. Three archetypes of users emerged from the synthesis: Universalists, Rationalists and Republicans. The cross-system comparative experience makes the participants have more supportive attitudes toward the ideals of health sector solidarity. (shrink)

Publicly-funded health systems, including those national health services and social or National Health Insurances, are institutionalized solidarity in health. In Europe, solidarity originated from the legacies of labor movements, the Judeo-Christian traditions, and nationalist sentiments in the re-construction Era after the WWII. In middle-to-high income East Asian countries, such as Japan, Taiwan, Korea, the health systems were built on different grounds and do not have such ethical origins of solidarity. As health systems (...) in Europe and East Asia are both facing sustainability crises due to aging population, stagnant economy, changing boundaries, and advancing medical technologies, how those systems with the European solidaristic ethical traditions can be revived and how those without the European traditions could survive become a matter of theoretical interests and an urgent policy problem to be addressed. Drawing on contemporary theories of solidarity, this essay analyzes the boundary problem and its impact on the sustainability of the health system in Taiwan. It then considers two plausible origins of solidarity in Taiwan. One is the re-emerged civic nationalism, and the other is an ethos of common life. It is argued that after years of implementation, the National Health Insurance in Taiwan might have shaped the social values and people’s habits and formed an ethos of common life. Such ethos could be an ethical origin of solidarity in non-western societies and help the health systems endure the prolonged sustainability crises. (shrink)

As the only nation in the western world without a national health insurance program, the United States faces ongoing issues of access and fairness in health care coverage. The Clinton administration tried and failed to address the problem of universal coverage. Since then we have focused on the narrower, but nonetheless real, issues of fairness and equity in the benefits package provided in insurance plans. The LORAN Commission spent two years trying to devise agreed-upon principles (...) to govern such issues. The lesson learned was the same as that of the Ethics Force study: there was no possibility of getting agreement, let alone consensus, among the participants on how to decide what should be a covered benefit. There were, however, two generally agreed upon principles that emerged regarding health care: “Every individual should be treated alike,” and “When it comes to health, cost cannot be a consideration.” That formula translated into providing everyone with everything. The only certain outcome from such a policy would be fiscal insolvency and ultimately bankruptcy. (shrink)