Special Issues with Single-Payer Health Insurance Systems
Health insurance systems have been broadly classified into two groups based on the number of insurance pools: single-payer and multiple-payer systems. In single-payer systems, one organization-typically the government-collects and pools revenues an...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2013
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2004/09/5652820/special-issues-single-payer-health-insurance-systems http://hdl.handle.net/10986/13686 |
| Summary: | Health insurance systems have been
broadly classified into two groups based on the number of
insurance pools: single-payer and multiple-payer systems. In
single-payer systems, one organization-typically the
government-collects and pools revenues and purchases health
services for the entire population, while in multiple-payer
systems several organizations carry out these roles for
specific segments of the population. This paper examines the
organization and operation of single-payer health insurance
systems. We classify single-payer systems into four generic
models: regional/private, regional/public, central/private,
and central/public. The differences between these models are
the level of centralization of financing and administration
of health care (regional or central) and the ownership of
health care providers (mainly public or mainly private).
These four models are compared in four topic areas: revenue
collection, risk pooling, purchasing, and social solidarity.
The single-payer models are then contrasted with systems
that use multiple-payer models. The comparisons are made in
the same four topics: revenue collection, risk pooling,
purchasing, and social solidarity. The paper concludes with
a discussion of specific issues for low- and middle-income
countries considering a choice between single- and
multiple-payer systems. |
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