Increments toward what? (9/58)

Incremental proposals to expand health insurance coverage, such as expansions of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) or creation of new tax credits, should be examined for the values that underlie them and for how they structure future options for additional incremental coverage expansions. This paper examines five design issues in incremental reform: who determines coverage options for the newly insured; what risk pool do they enter; what is the government's contribution toward their coverage; what barriers are created by efforts to encourage efficiency; and how are issues of federalism handled? Tax credits are a departure from past approaches, while an SCHIP expansion is a continuation of current policy directions.  (+info)

The effect of income pooling within a call group on rates of obstetric intervention. (10/58)

BACKGROUND: On July 1, 1997, the call group at a tertiary referral hospital in Ottawa changed its remuneration. The authors tested the hypothesis that change in an obstetric call group's remuneration from individual fee-for-service billing to equal sharing of the pooled group income would result in reduced rates of obstetric intervention. METHODS: Intervention rates were compared for the 12 months before (1678 births) and the 12 months after (1934 births) the change. Data were collected on onset of labour, indication for induction of labour, mode of delivery and neonatal outcome. Statistical analysis was performed with Wilcoxon's signed-rank test. RESULTS: The mean rate of elective induction of labour was 38.6% in the year before the change and 33.3% in the year after the change (p = 0.01). There were small but statistically significant increases in the mean duration of labour and mean length of the second stage (p = 0.03). INTERPRETATION: Billing policy may affect clinical decisions. Our findings add weight to the literature showing increased intervention rates with fee-for-service remuneration.  (+info)

Risk structure compensation in Germany's statutory health insurance. (11/58)

In 1996 insurees in Germany's statutory health insurance system were given a right to choose their sickness fund. To ensure that all funds had an equal starting position, a risk structure compensation scheme based on income and average expenditure by age and sex was introduced. From an analysis of expenditure and transfers, data on sickness fund membership and a published survey, the following effects can be identified: sickness funds merged, with a reduction in number from 1,221 to 420 between 1993 and 2000; the risk compensation scheme narrowed differences in contribution rates; insurees left the more expensive funds for cheaper ones; and increasing transfer sums indicate further risk segregation. Thus, the compensation mechanism will have to be retained permanently, although modifications are likely.  (+info)

Implementing prospective budgeting for Dutch sickness funds. (12/58)

Most if not all social policies entail redistribution of scarce public resources from central government to regional and local authorities, to individual citizens or non-government agencies. Governments use a wide variety of instruments to allocate public funds, including direct state provision of subsidies and goods and services, setting budgets at different levels, and regulation of social insurance schemes. Most industrialised countries have developed budget models based on implicit or explicit allocation criteria. Governments usually start by determining global budgets for an entire category of public spending and then specifying the amounts allocated for categories of spending, and next, the budgets for individual agencies. Within such a 'cascading' model, the lower level budgets may be more controversial than the global budgets, as they directly affect the amounts available to individual actors in the system, e.g. hospitals or health insurance agencies. Setting budgets not only shifts decision-making authority but also financial risks from the central government to decentralised actors. The introduction of the prospective budgeting model for the Dutch sickness funds illustrates why determining budgets is not merely a matter of choosing objective allocation criteria, but also, of interaction between state and stakeholders. In the typical Dutch neocorporatist policy arena, where organised interests share responsibilities with government for the shaping and implementation of social policies, the health insurance agencies actively participated in the development of the budget model.  (+info)

Reinsurance of health insurance for the informal sector. (13/58)

Deficient financing of health services in low-income countries and the absence of universal insurance coverage leaves most of the informal sector in medical indigence, because people cannot assume the financial consequences of illness. The role of communities in solving this problem has been recognized, and many initiatives are under way. However, community financing is rarely structured as health insurance. Communities that pool risks (or offer insurance) have been described as micro-insurance units. The sources of their financial instability and the options for stabilization are explained. Field data from Uganda and the Philippines, as well as simulated situations, are used to examine the arguments. The article focuses on risk transfer from micro-insurance units to reinsurance. The main insight of the study is that when the financial results of micro-insurance units can be estimated, they can enter reinsurance treaties and be stabilized from the first year. The second insight is that the reinsurance pool may require several years of operation before reaching cost neutrality.  (+info)

Supplemental health insurance: did Croatia miss an opportunity? (14/58)

Croatia continues to face a health-funding crisis. A recent supplemental health insurance law increases revenues through first increasing co-payments, then raising the payroll tax to cover those co-payments. This public finance "slight-of-hand" will not solve the system's structural issues and may worsen system performance both in terms of efficiency and equity. Should Croatia have considered private supplemental insurance as an alternative? There is a new single private supplemental health insurance market now evolving over the EU countries and into Eastern Europe. Croatians could take advantage of lowered costs due to larger risk pooling and the lower administrative overhead of mature insurance organizations. Private supplemental insurance, when designed well, can address several objectives, including a) increased revenues into the health sector; b) removal of the public burden of coverage of selected services for certain population groups; and c) encourage new management and organizational innovations into the sector. Private and multiple company insurance markets are thought to be superior in terms of consumer responsiveness; choice of benefits; adoption of new, more expensive technology; and use of private sector providers. Private sector insurers may also encourage "spillover" effects encouraging reforms with public sector insurance performance. There is already an emerging private insurance market in Croatia, but can it be expanded and properly regulated? The private insurance companies might capture as much as 30-70% of the market for certain services, such as high cost procedures, preferred providers, and hotel amenities. But the Government will need to strengthen the regulatory framework for private insurance and assure that there is adequate regulatory capacity.  (+info)

Reduction of catastrophic health care expenditures by a community-based health insurance scheme in Gujarat, India: current experiences and challenges. (15/58)

OBJECTIVE: To assess the Self Employed Women's Association's Medical Insurance Fund in Gujarat in terms of insurance coverage according to income groups, protection of claimants from costs of hospitalization, time between discharge and reimbursement, and frequency of use. METHODS: One thousand nine hundred and thirty claims submitted over six years were analysed. FINDINGS: Two hundred and fifteen (11%) of 1927 claims were rejected. The mean household income of claimants was significantly lower than that of the general population. The percentage of households below the poverty line was similar for claimants and the general population. One thousand seven hundred and twelve (1712) claims were reimbursed: 805 (47%) fully and 907 (53%) at a mean reimbursement rate of 55.6%. Reimbursement more than halved the percentage of catastrophic hospitalizations (>10% of annual household income) and hospitalizations resulting in impoverishment. The average time between discharge and reimbursement was four months. The frequency of submission of claims was low (18.0/1000 members per year: 22-37% of the estimated frequency of hospitalization). CONCLUSIONS: The findings have implications for community-based health insurance schemes in India and elsewhere. Such schemes can protect poor households against the uncertain risk of medical expenses. They can be implemented in areas where institutional capacity is too weak to organize nationwide risk-pooling. Such schemes can cover poor people, including people and households below the poverty line. A trade off exists between maintaining the scheme's financial viability and protecting members against catastrophic expenditures. To facilitate reimbursement, administration, particularly processing of claims, should happen near claimants. Fine-tuning the design of a scheme is an ongoing process - a system of monitoring and evaluation is vital.  (+info)

Inside the sausage factory: improving estimates of the effects of health insurance expansion proposals. (16/58)

The fate of a proposal to expand health insurance is influenced by predictions of the proposal's effects on the number of newly insured and the cost of new coverage. Estimates vary widely, for reasons that are often hard to discern and evaluate. This article describes and compares the frameworks and parameters used for insurance modeling. It examines conventions and controversies surrounding a series of modeling parameters: how individuals respond to a change in the price of coverage, the extent of participation in a new plan by those already privately insured, firms' behavior, and the value of public versus private coverage. The article also suggests ways of making models more transparent and proposes "reference case" guidelines for modelers so that consumers can compare modeling results.  (+info)