Beyond Survival : Protecting Households from Health Shocks in Latin America
This book breaks new ground in the ongoing debate about health finance and financial protection from the costs of health care. The evidence and discussion support the need to consider financial protection, in addition to health status, as a policy...
Main Authors: | , |
---|---|
Format: | Publication |
Language: | English en_US |
Published: |
Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press
2012
|
Subjects: | |
Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2006/06/6963540/beyond-survival-protecting-households-health-shocks-latin-america http://hdl.handle.net/10986/7120 |
Summary: | This book breaks new ground in the
ongoing debate about health finance and financial protection
from the costs of health care. The evidence and discussion
support the need to consider financial protection, in
addition to health status, as a policy objective when
setting priorities for health systems. This book reviews the
Latin American experience with health reform in the last 20
years and the fundamentals of health system financing, using
new evidence to show the magnitude and mechanisms that
determine the impoverishing effects of health events
(diseases, accidents, and those of the life cycle). It
provides options for policy makers on how to protect, and
help household to protect themselves, against this
impoverishment. The authors use empirical evidence from six
case studies commissioned for this report, on Argentina,
Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Mexico. This book
provides policy makers with a solid conceptual basis for
decisions on the contents of mandatory health insurance
benefit packages, choices of financing mechanisms, and the
roles of public policy in this field. It provides an
in-depth analysis of, and organizational alternatives for,
risk pooling and health insurance for financial protection.
It analyzes the urgent need to extend risk pooling to the
informal sector, the challenges for current social insurance
arrangements, and options for policy makers to effectively
extend risk pooling to the informal sector. |
---|