LIST OF PANELS

Worldwide there is a wide variety in the mix of public and private responsibilities for the funding, contracting and provision of health care services across countries and across continents. Variety exists despite similarities in basic policy goals (such as providing access to good quality health care to all residents at reasonable cost, improving the general health of populations, protecting incomes) as well as policy challenges and programmatic change. To complicate matters, borders are not clear between traditional and western medicine, or between formal and informal care. Papers are invited that engage in comparative analysis of selected health care systems (that is, more than one country or else multiple units within one country) and analyze common trends as well as varied strategies and policy outcomes. Special emphasis will be given to the issue of raising revenue through health insurance in comparative contexts – that is between classic OECD concerns versus Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa.

Public policy requires comparative enquiry. The scientific relevance of this panel is grounded in the non-experimental record of national and subnational efforts to raise revenue for health services through a variety of devices (general taxes, earmarked taxes, insurance premiums, user-fees, out-of-pocket). The timeframe is minimally a decade of experience, preferably several decades up to a half-century if data exist.