Health Finance Literature Review

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CHAPTER TWO LITERATURE REVIEW 2.0 Introduction This chapter is in three parts. The first part attempts an overview of Ghana’s NHIS. The second part tries to bring out the framework for measuring cost and technical efficiency and some of the limitations associated with the usage of any particular estimation technique whilst the third aspect focuses on some empirical studies on cost and technical efficiency and empirical determinants of cost and technical efficiency. 2.1 Ghana’s National Health Insurance Schemes 2.1.1 Health Insurance Health insurance can be refer to as any form of insurance whose payment is contingent on the insured incurring additional…show more content…
Technically, it is referred to as a mechanism through which the risks of incurring health care costs are spread among a group of individuals or households (Arhin-Tenkorang, 2001). 2.1.2 Healthcare Financing The World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2000 refers to health financing as the “function of a health system concerned with the mobilization, accumulation, and allocation of money to cover the health needs of the people, individually and collectively, in the health system.” The organisation (WHO) has made it clear that the “ purpose of health financing is to make funding available, as well as to set the right financial incentives to providers, to ensure that all individuals have access to effective public health and personal health care” (WHO,…show more content…
Its financing based on payroll taxation encounters the problem where the tax base, which excludes no-labor income, may be narrower than under broader scope general revenue financing (Amelung et al, 2003) cited in (Glied, 2008). Some social insurance systems cap the maximum contribution, decreasing the progressivity of this financing process or method. Contributions that are generated via the social insurance system should finance the full insured cost of the health program (or a pre-specified proportion of that cost). Thus, the contribution level or rate is tied to the cost of providing health insurance. Social insurance payments may defer with the choice of plan in a multi-plan system (as in Germany) or may be fixed as in the case of the US Medicare program (Glied, 2008). Private insurance financing may be individual (although this is rare except in highly regulated contexts) or operate via employers or other purchasing organisations. Except in highly regulated contexts or in employer-sponsored groups, the price of coverage is related to expected health expenditure- older, sicker people turn to pay more for coverage and premiums increase as health expenditure goes up (Glied,

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