Can private health insurance fill gaps in publicly financed coverage? Does it enhance access to health care or improve efficiency in health service delivery? Will it provide fiscal relief for governments struggling to raise public revenue for health? This book examines the successes, failures and challenges of private health insurance globally through country case studies written by leading national experts. Each case study considers the role of history and politics in shaping private health insurance and determining its impact on health system performance. Despite great diversity in the size and functioning of markets for private health insurance, the book identifies clear patterns across countries, drawing out valuable lessons for policymakers while showing how history and politics have proved a persistent barrier to effective public policy.
Author(s): Sarah Thomson, Anna Sagan, Elias Mossialos
Series: European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 592
City: Cambridge
Cover
Half-title
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Boxes
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors
1 Why private health insurance?
2 Private finance publicly subsidized: the case of Australian health insurance
3 Private health insurance in Brazil, Egypt and India
4 Private health insurance in Canada
5 Regulating private health insurance: France’s attemptat getting it all
6 Statutory and private health insurance in Germanyand Chile: two stories of coexistence and conflict
7 Uncovering the complex role of private health insurancein Ireland
8 Integrating public and private insurance in the Israelihealth system: an attempt to reconcile conflicting values
9 Private health insurance in Japan, Republic of Korea and Taiwan, China
10 The role of private health insurance in financinghealth care in Kenya
11 Private health insurance in the Netherlands
12 The challenges of pursuing private health insurance in low- and middle-income countries: lessons from South Africa
13 Undermining risk pooling by individualizing benefits:the use of medical savings accounts in South Africa
14 Consumer-driven health insurance in Switzerland, where politics is governed by federalism and direct democracy
15 Regression to the increasingly mean? Private healthinsurance in the United States of America
16 Health savings accounts in the United States of America
Index
