Sarah Thomson is a Senior Health Financing Specialist at the WHO Barcelona Office for Health Systems Strengthening. Anna Sagan is a Research Fellow at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. Elias Mossialos is Brian Abel-Smith Professor of Health Policy, Head of the Department of Health Policy and Director of LSE Health at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

'This book makes a huge contribution to our understanding of private health insurance and its roles. It provides clarity about the different forms it can take and different terminology. The country studies give insight into how private insurance performs in practice. The book brings together some of the best researchers in healthcare finance who have excellent understanding of different systems, their successes and failures. While the book will be very useful for students and researchers, the analysis is of particular interest for governments and policy makers – it provides a dispassionate review of private health insurance and may help to prevent mistakes from being repeated.' Charles Normand, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Trinity College Dublin and Professor of the Economics of Palliative Care and Rehabillitation, Cicely Saunders Institute, King's College London

• 1. Why private health insurance? Sarah Thomson, Anna Sagan and Elias Mossialos; 2. Private finance publicly subsidized: the case of Australian health insurance Jane Hall, Denzil G. Fiebig and Keens van Gool; 3. Private health insurance in Brazil, Egypt and India Maria Dolores Montoya Diaz, Noah Haber, Philipa Mladovsky, Emma Pitchforth, Wael Fayek Saleh and Flavia Mori Sarti; 4. Private health insurance in Canada Jeremiah Hurley and G. Emmanuel Guindon; 5. Regulating private health insurance: France's attempt at getting it all Agnès Couffinhal and Carine Franc; 6. Statutory and private health insurance in Germany and Chile: two stories of coexistence and conflict Stefanie Ettelt and Andres Roman-Urrestarazu; 7. Uncovering the complex role of private health insurance in Ireland Brian Turner and Samantha Smith; 8. Integrating public and private insurance in the Israeli health system: an attempt to reconcile conflicting values Shuli Brammli-Greenberg, Ruth Waitzberg and Revital Gross; 9. Private health insurance in Japan, Republic of Korea and Taiwan, China Soonman Kwon, Naoki Ikegami and Yue-Chune Lee; 10. The role of private health insurance in financing health care in Kenya David Muthaka; 11. Private health insurance in the Netherlands Hans Maarse and Patrick Jeurissen; 12. The challenges of pursuing private health insurance in low- and middle-income countries: lessons from South Africa Di McIntyre and Heather McLeod; 13. Undermining risk pooling by individualizing benefits: the use of medical savings accounts in South Africa Heather McLeod and Di McIntyre; 14. Consumer-driven health insurance in Switzerland, where politics is governed by federalism and direct democracy Luca Crivelli; 15. Regression to the increasingly mean? Private health insurance in the United States of America Lawrence D. Brown and Sherry A Glied; 16. Health savings accounts in the United States of America Sherry A. Glied, Dan P. Ly and Lawrence D. Brown.