The Mexican social security system, after operating for over six decades, has managed to provide healthcare for slightly over half the resident population.
There are wide geographical and socioeconomic variations in coverage. To provide wider coverage, the Federal Government created the Sistema de Protección Social en Salud (SPSS) for covering low income family. It becomes the third...
The book by Cristian Baeza and Truman Packard is based on the next hypothesis: adverse health events reduce the consumption of goods and services different from health services, and many households become poor because of that. While the authors recognize that the evidence they present on the topic is limited, they propose the use of a “universal risk pool” as a way to eliminate the problem of...
The paper discusses the financing of the health care reform implemented in Colombia since the early nineties and explains the obstacles faced on the way to universal enrollment to social health insurance. The paper describes the reform and the sources created for its financing. It presents the observed trends in the financing of the insurance schemes created by the reform, identifies the...
In this issue of Well-being and Social Policy we have tried to include articles that support the debate around social insurance in health. This is an issue in which simple answers are hardly ever found, and a long term effort is required to understand the idiosyncrasy of each country and the best mix of regulation and financing options. Additionally, the studied cases point out to the need of a...
The model of health care financing and delivery for which Canada is best known internationally is its universal, single-payer, first-dollar system of coverage for physician and hospital services. For several decades following its establishment in the late 1950's and 1960's, this model provided public finance from the general tax base (like the UK), at levels of generosity, relative to GDP, like...
This study analyzes achievements and obstacles in the process of moving towards universal coverage of essential health care services in Costa Rica. It describes the country as exemplary in the region, both in terms of population health status as well as health financing indicators. Life expectancy and the level of pre-payment are both comparable to high income countries. However, the process that...
