Funding Health Care

Notes on contributors
Series editors' preface
Foreword
Funding health care
an introduction
Financing health care
taxation and the alternatives
Social health insurance financing
Health financing reforms in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
Private health insurance and medical savings accounts
theory and experience
Voluntary health insurance in the European Union
User charges for health care
Informal health payments in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union
issues, trends and policy implications
Lessons on the sustainability of health care funding from low- and middle- income countries
Funding long-term care
the public and private options
Strategic resource allocation and funding decisions
Funding health care in Europe
weighing up the options
References
Index.

The question of how to generate sufficient revenue to pay for health care has become a serious concern for nearly all European policy-makers. This book examines the advantages and disadvantages of funding arrangements currently in use across Europe. Adopting a cross-national, cross-disciplinary perspective, it assesses the relative merits of the main methods of raising resources including taxation; social, voluntary and supplemental forms of insurance; and self-pay including co-payments. Chapters written by leading health policy analysts review recent evidence and experience in both eastern and western Europe. The volume is introduced by a summary chapter which integrates conceptual issues in funding with an overview of the main advantages and disadvantages of each method of funding drawn from the expert chapters.

This is an important book for students of health policy, health economics, public policy and managment, and for health managers and policy makers.