Financing Health Insurance in Asia Pacific Countries

Abstract

The paper discusses models of health insurance, including compulsory (social) health insurance, voluntary insurance, and community-based financing schemes. It illustrates the features of these models in terms of coverage, funding, sustainability, payment mechanisms, public-private mix, risk protection, and cost-containment properties, and outlines some emerging challenges to health financing arrangements. Health financing systems used in Japan, Korea, Taiwan, ASEAN and China are discussed, and implications are drawn for the developing countries in the Asia Pacific contemplating health insurance reform. Copyright © 2007 The Authors Journal compilation © 2007 Crawford School of Economics and Government, The Australian National University and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd. .

The impact of health insurance in Africa and Asia: a systematic review

“…Health insurance schemes undertake various initiatives to reach the vulnerable segments of the populations, such as discount cards, exemption schemes or free enrolment for vulnerable populations. For example, targeted policies of the National Health Insurance Program in the Philippines [32][33][34] and the Thai universal coverage scheme 34 increased the number of insured indigents and poor. In other countries, social inclusion is not achieved to the same extent, and in Cameroon, 35 …”

Study of the ex-post moral hazard of laboratory services in Iran

“…This finding is precious because it indicates that the Iranian health system suffers from ineffective referral and payment system policies and has failed to control consumer demand. As long as there is no mandatory referral system, cost-containment policies will be limited [16] . Besides, the fee-for-service payment system creates a much-desired condition for ex-post moral hazard by providing high access to all health system levels [14] .…”

“…Numerous studies have confirmed the increasing impact of moral hazard on health care expenditures, especially in health systems that work with fee-for-service payment models [14] , [15] and those without a mandatory referral system [16] , [17] . The presence of these two determinant factors and high medical insurance population coverage (about 95%) in Iran [18] , seems to have provided the appropriate conditions for the ex-post moral hazard problem.…”