WORLD SCIENTIFIC SERIES IN HEALTH INVESTMENT AND FINANCING – serie

This book is the first and only study on implementing Universal Health Coverage in poor, rural and informal settings, with end-to-end guidance for rolling out a demand-driven and needs-based health insurance model. The chapters are comprehensive, covering topics such as data collection and analysis for contextual risk assessment, the design of suitable benefits packages, how to price microinsurance, insurance education for illiterate or innumerate populations, the setting up of governance bodies and training staff for key roles, and information management.The book contains insights gained from years of fieldwork in several countries and is valuable reading for undergraduate and graduate students and practitioners of health microinsurance. As a companion to the author's first book, Financing Micro Health Insurance: Theory, Methods and Evidence, this book provides the only current source of information on implementing health microinsurance. The practical guidelines to setting up and operating a microinsurance scheme are accompanied by impact evaluation, chapter exercises and Issue Briefs that present examples of using tools that are necessary for successful implementation.

This book explores the business and investment implications of sustainability, both opportunities and challenges. The volume lays the groundwork for understanding the growing areas of sustainable business and sustainable finance. Over the past few decades, the world has witnessed significant improvements in economic development that meet a wide range of human needs. Ensuring that such development takes place in a "sustainable" way is the central focus of the book. The book provides insights for businesses, investors, and others on how to navigate this complex and evolving landscape.The United Nations and global leaders in business and investment have emphasized the important role that the private sector can play in protecting the environment and promoting a more sustainable use of resources."What is needed now is a new era of economic growth — growth that is at the same time socially and environmentally sustainable. This call for action in the Forward to the 1987 Bruntland Report (Our Common Future), which emphasizes that economic growth is part of the solution not the problem, still rings true nearly 40 years later.Gro Harlem BrundtlandReport of the World Commission on Environment and Development, United Nations 1987"Private sector leadership is vital to advance sustainable development and fight the existential threats of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution."António GuterresUnited Nations Secretary-GeneralMessage to International Chamber of Commerce's 13th World Chambers CongressUnited Nations Press Release on the Environment, June 21, 2023 (SG/SM/21851)Like Henry Ford's strategy over 100 years ago at the time of the mass introduction of the Model T Ford, Elon Musk had a similar strategy for switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy powered cars. "[Initially enter] the high end of the market, where customers are prepared to pay a premium, and then drive down [the] market as fast as possible to higher unit volume and lower prices with each successive model."Elon MuskCEO Tesla Inc, Interview with Solar Tribune, Feb 16, 2020"Investing for the long term requires taking a long-term view of what will impact returns, including demographics, government policy, technological advancements, and the transition to a low carbon economy."Laurence D FinkBlackrock Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Larry Fink's Annual Chairman's Letter to Investors,Blackrock, 2023"Capital markets are an extraordinarily powerful tool in the fight against climate change. Government action is certainly critical. But ultimately, reducing emissions globally depends on the private sector recognizing the commercial opportunities that sustainability presents."Michael R BloombergFounder of Bloomberg LP and Bloomberg PhilanthropiesDavid M SolomonCEO of Goldman SachsMobilize the Market to Fight Global WarmingBloomberg, Opinion Article, April 27, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the world's vulnerabilities to health and economic ruin from disease outbreaks. But the pandemic merely reveals fundamental weaknesses and contradictions in global health. What are the roots of discontents in global health? How do geo-politics, power dynamics, knowledge gaps, racism, and corruption affect global health? Is foreign aid for health due for a radical overhaul?This book is an incisive guide to the practice of global health in real life. Global health policy is at a crossroads. It is on trial at the interface between the Global North and the Global South. There has been remarkable progress in health outcomes over the past century. Yet, countries face a complex landscape of lofty ambitions in the form of political commitments to Universal Health Coverage, Human Capital, and Global Health Security. These ambitions are tempered by multiple constraints. Investors in global health must navigate a minefield of uneven progress, great expectations, and denials of scientific evidence by entrenched interests. That terrain is further complicated by the hegemonic suppression of innovation that threatens the status quo and by self-perpetuating cycles of dependency of the Global South on the Global North.This book is an unflinching scrutiny of concepts and cases by a veteran of global health policy and practice. It holds a mirror to the world and lays out pathways to a better future. The book is a must-have GPS for policy makers and practitioners as they navigate the maze of global health.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the world's vulnerabilities to health and economic ruin from disease outbreaks. But the pandemic merely reveals fundamental weaknesses and contradictions in global health. What are the roots of discontents in global health? How do geo-politics, power dynamics, knowledge gaps, racism, and corruption affect global health? Is foreign aid for health due for a radical overhaul?This book is an incisive guide to the practice of global health in real life. Global health policy is at a crossroads. It is on trial at the interface between the Global North and the Global South. There has been remarkable progress in health outcomes over the past century. Yet, countries face a complex landscape of lofty ambitions in the form of political commitments to Universal Health Coverage, Human Capital, and Global Health Security. These ambitions are tempered by multiple constraints. Investors in global health must navigate a minefield of uneven progress, great expectations, and denials of scientific evidence by entrenched interests. That terrain is further complicated by the hegemonic suppression of innovation that threatens the status quo and by self-perpetuating cycles of dependency of the Global South on the Global North.This book is an unflinching scrutiny of concepts and cases by a veteran of global health policy and practice. It holds a mirror to the world and lays out pathways to a better future. The book is a must-have GPS for policy makers and practitioners as they navigate the maze of global health.

This book examines policies and programs which overcome the barriers that too often impede policy makers and aid agencies from effectively engaging with private health providers to assure and improve care.The private health sector plays a critical role in developing countries, as it often provides a large share of all care. In most countries, it is impossible to improve health services and products without engaging the private sector, and without this engagement health outcomes stagnate. Yet, policy makers and aid agencies often overlook this, preferring to stick with familiar approaches to health goals — grounded in public agencies and public services. This ingrained public-sector-centrism undermines program effectiveness and sustainability.Using case studies from Bangladesh's tuberculosis program to Estonia's contracted primary care, to Brazil's hospital public-private partnerships, this book gives examples of how policy makers and aid agencies are making efforts to involve the private sector in their health systems. Building from these examples, this book explores the implications for the kind of development assistance that is necessary to be more effective in supporting these initiatives.This book is an invaluable resource for policy makers, analysts, economists, and development specialists looking to improve programs, policies, and systems and leverage all of the resources in low- and middle-income countries to advance public health.

The recent expansion of health insurance coverage in the USA under the Affordable Health Care Act, and current threats to reverse the benefits of this reform, have once again focused the world's attention on the difficult challenges faced by other countries trying to provide better access to healthcare to their population at an affordable cost. This textbook provides a comparative review of financing universal access to healthcare in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.The first two chapters of the book provide a framework for financing universal access to healthcare. The remaining eight chapters present case studies of eight OECD countries that have successfully introduced reforms to finance universal access to healthcare for their population through landmark legislative reforms. A concluding chapter focuses on the lessons learned from the OECD and recommendations from policymakers and others who are planning similar reforms. The book is designed as a learning tool for students and as a user guide for policymakers.

Healthcare for all at affordable prices is still a major but universally elusive goal. Everyone spends money on healthcare, and it is the most impoverishing consumption item. Thus, most governments (and the United Nations) promote Universal Health Coverage — each country's unique blend of tools for healthcare financing, including taxes, subsidies and market controls.Most people in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have no health insurance of any kind. And most LMIC governments lack the political will, information, or resources to require their citizens to buy health insurance themselves or to subsidize insurance for all who cannot afford the price. This book deals with financing voluntary and contributory health insurance for resource-poor and rural groups in LMICs.This book addresses three issues. The first is how to catalyse demand for health insurance and develop insurance literacy among the largely illiterate and innumerate target population, using training programs to build an enabling consensus, allowing locals to create and administer such schemes. The second involves the process of developing simplified methods for risk assessment, which can help to underwrite risks, price the micro health insurance schemes, and ensure proper implementation. The third issue is formulating a compelling business case which would make this health insurance affordable, financially sustainable, and operationally scalable.This book develops insurance education and financial literacy for students of economics, business administration, insurance, development studies, and social work to prepare them for practical work as implementers, policymakers, or evaluators. A supplementary section for teachers and students includes comprehension questions.

This volume examines American exceptionalism in healthcare as the historical development of a large, pluralistic, innovation-driven, mixed public-private healthcare industry. Its central argument is that US healthcare should not be understood solely as a delivery system, public program, or cost problem, but as a productive national industry comprising clinical services, non-clinical services, manufacturing, financing, insurance, public health, research, digital systems, and supply chains. The book traces how this industry evolved from a fragmented cottage sector into a corporate powerhouse with exceptional scientific capacity, specialized care, organizational diversity, entrepreneurial energy, and technological depth.The major story of the volume is cumulative. It begins by defining the conceptual foundations, national context, historical evolution, resources, structure, and functions of the healthcare industry. It shows how federalism, private enterprise, professional autonomy, plural ownership, market-based organization, and consumer choice produced both extraordinary strengths and persistent weaknesses. The emphasis is not on capital markets as the main subject, but on how resources, institutions, organizations, incentives, and governance shape the industry's ability to deliver care, develop knowledge, manufacture technologies, and respond to patient needs.The volume then evaluates the achievements of the US healthcare industry across process, impact, and economic indicators, emphasizing advanced care, biomedical innovation, quality, productivity, patient experience, financial protection, and national economic contribution. It converts this assessment into a reform agenda centered on market-conforming remedies, stronger competition, improved transparency, better risk pooling, interoperability, payment reform, and bounded public backstops where markets alone cannot perform.The afterword brings the argument together by framing American exceptionalism as the interplay of constitutional federalism, private-sector organization, professional autonomy, plural financing, civil liberties, patient autonomy, market incentives, legal regulation, and biomedical ethics. Its final message is that American healthcare should be improved by levelling up its distinctive strengths, not by weakening the institutional features that made it exceptional.

This volume reviews the economic underpinnings (investment and financing) and institutional reforms needed to successfully scale up the education of health workers. In this regard, the book examines five major economic and institutional challenges that policy makers face: (1) governance of health education organizations and systems; (2) approaches to financing the education of health workers; (3) the special nature of capital investment in expanding the capacity of health education institutions; (4) public-private partnerships in health education; and (5) equity in accessing health education, with a special focus on issues that arise from private approaches to the education of health workers.Much of the existing literature focuses on the quality and contents of training health workers, and very little has been written on the institutional dimension of financing their training and education. This book examines the complex institutional and financial models and approaches that can impact the demand and supply of health worker education programs around the world.Building on the findings of the Independent Commission on the Education of Health Professionals for the 21st Century, which published on the foundations and the issues of global postsecondary professional education, this volume brings in new and in-depth aspects such as governance, capital investments, and the role of the private sector in the production of health professionals; thus allowing the reader to understand how the health worker education field has moved from theory to practice.