This study reviews Ghana's health financing system with a special emphasis on its National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). It suggests a number of options to reform the structural and operational features of Ghana's NHIS to ensure its smooth transition to universal coverage and financial sustainability. Health financing reform options are developed in the context of Ghana's health system configuration as well as its demographic, epidemiological, socioeconomic, labor-market, industrial-structure, political, and geographic realities. Findings show that for the NHIS to expand enrollment and become sustainable, more public resources will be needed.
Myanmar's National Health Plan (NHP) for 2017-2021 has laid out the vision of achieving Universal Health Coverage (UHC) by 2030. The NHP aims to improve the delivery of health services and financial protection for Myanmar people through substantial investments in frontline service delivery units and through a range of reforms in the health system, including on health financing. This report assesses Myanmar's health financing system. The analysis is structured around three main sets of questions: (i) Who pays for health in Myanmar? Given that the government needs to invest more in the health sector, where could (or should) the money come from; (ii) Are prepaid and pooled funds for health sufficient and equitable? What additional pooling arrangements could Myanmar consider; and (iii) What key steps and reforms are needed for Myanmar to develop the capabilities of a strategic purchaser in the medium term? This Health Financing System Assessment aims to inform health financing policy choices that the Government of Myanmar will need to make as part of the development and implementation of its Health Financing Strategy.
Health financing in Bulgaria is organized in a way that should, in theory, allow the system to deliver good performance. In particular, the national health insurance fund was set up to provide universal coverage, and the provider-payment system contains elements of international best practices. The hospital-centric service delivery structure is not well targeted to the predominant and growing burden of non-communicable diseases, and loopholes in the provider-payment system reinforce this bias toward expensive hospital care. The first part of this report presents a health financing diagnostic to assist the Government of Bulgaria in developing health financing reform options that improve the efficiency, equity, and long-term sustainability of the Bulgarian health system. The second part reviews the reform agenda currently envisaged by the government with a focus on health financing aspects. It presents practical suggestions, drawn from international experience, which should support the government as it moves toward implementing its reform agenda. These suggestions aim to enhance the reforms' capacity to address some of the performance gaps highlighted in part one with respect to efficiency, sustainability, and capacity to provide financial protection.
Despite attempts to contain health care cost, healthcare expenditure has been surging worldwide. Healthcare financing remains high on the political agenda and nations are struggling hard to balance cost containment with service quality, accessibility, efficiency, etc (Froetschel 2011). Hong Kong, of no exception, faces increasing pressure to raise public expenditure on health and is seeking new ways to finance healthcare. This paper attempts to provide an overview of Hong Kong's existing health financing system and identify possible reform options. ; published_or_final_version ; Politics and Public Administration ; Master ; Master of Public Administration
India is the world's largest parliamentary democracy and has a federal system of government with 28 States, 7 Union Territories, 640 Districts, almost 6,000 Sub districts, more than 5,000 Towns and 600,000 Villages. India is also one among the fastest growing economies of the world. The gross domestic product of the country grew by an average of 7.5 percent per year during the first eleven years of the second millennium, from the start of 2000 to the end of 2010. This gave India the world's second fastest growing economy, after China's (IMF, 2011). Over the past 50 years since independence India made significant achievement in terms of improvement in health. India could make progress in mortality rates, nutrition and maternal and child care. However India is still way behind many fast developing countries such as China, Vietnam and Sri Lanka in terms of many of the health indicators (Satia et al 1999). It is also important to note the vast variation in health indicators across the country from the worst cases to the best cases. States like Kerala with the best health indicators to the states like Bihar with not so good indicators in health. India is a country with one of the oldest and decentralized health care systems of the world. In case of government funded health care system, the quality and access of various health care services including primary and secondary has been an important concern. The various factors that influence the quality and access are yet to be addressed effectively in the India health care. India also piloted a number of health development schemes including many popular flagship health care programs. Health and health care need to be distinguished from each other for no better reason than that the former is often incorrectly seen as a direct function of the latter. Heath is clearly not the mere absence of disease. Good Health confers on a person or group freedom from illness - and the ability to realize one's potential. Health is therefore best understood as the indispensable basis for ...
This overview of health financing tools, policies and trends--with a particular focus on challenges facing developing countries--provides the basis for effective policy-making. Analyzing the current global environment, the book discusses health financing goals in the context of both the underlying health, demographic, social, economic, political and demographic analytics as well as the institutional realities faced by developing countries, and assesses policy options in the context of global evidence, the international aid architecture, cross-sectoral interactions, and countries' macroeconomic
Access options:
The following links lead to the full text from the respective local libraries:
AbstractAlthough funding strategies can be used as powerful incentives to improve a mental health system, by themselves they are not sufficient to bring about change.
