http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec19571/index.htmhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insuranceHealth insurance
Health insurance works by estimating the overall risk of healthcare expenses and developing a routine finance structure (such as a monthly premium or annual tax) that will ensure that money is available to pay for the healthcare benefits specified in the insurance agreement. The benefit is administered by a central organization, most often either a government agency or a private or not-for-profit entity operating a health plan.
How it works
A Health insurance policy is a contract between an insurance company and an individual. The contract can be renewable annually or monthly. The type and amount of health care costs that will be covered by the health plan are specified in advance, in the member contract or Evidence of Coverage booklet. The individual policy-holder's payment obligations may take several forms[7]:
Premium: The amount the policy-holder pays to the health plan each month to purchase health coverage.
Deductible: The amount that the policy-holder must pay out-of-pocket before the health plan pays its share. For example, a policy-holder might have to pay a $500 deductible per year, before any of their health care is covered by the health plan. It may take several doctor's visits or prescription refills before the policy-holder reaches the deductible and the health plan starts to pay for care.
Copayment: The amount that the policy-holder must pay out of pocket before the health plan pays for a particular visit or service. For example, a policy-holder might pay a $45 copayment for a doctor's visit, or to obtain a prescription. A copayment must be paid each time a particular service is obtained.
Coinsurance: Instead of paying a fixed amount up front (a copayment), the policy-holder must pay a percentage of the total cost. For example, the member might have to pay 20% of the cost of a surgery, while the health plan pays the other 80%. Because there is no upper limit on coinsurance, the policy-holder can end up owing very little, or a significant amount, depending on the actual costs of the services they obtain.
Exclusions: Not all services are covered. The policy-holder is generally expected to pay the full cost of non-covered services out of their own pocket.
Coverage limits: Some health plans only pay for health care up to a certain dollar amount. The policy-holder may be expected to pay any charges in excess of the health plan's maximum payment for a specific service. In addition, some plans have annual or lifetime coverage maximums. In these cases, the health plan will stop payment when they reach the benefit maximum, and the policy-holder must pay all remaining costs.
Out-of-pocket maximums: Similar to coverage limits, except that in this case, the member's payment obligation ends when they reach the out-of-pocket maximum, and the health plan pays all further covered costs. Out-of-pocket maximums can be limited to a specific benefit category (such as prescription drugs) or can apply to all coverage provided during a specific benefit year.
Capitation: An amount paid by an insurer to a health care provider, for which the provider agrees to treat all members of the insurer.
In-Network Provider: A health care provider on a list of providers preselected by the insurer. The insurer will offer discounted coinsurance or copayments, or additional benefits, to a plan member to see an in-network provider. Generally, providers in network are providers who have a contract with the insurer to accept rates further discounted from the "usual and customary" charges the insurer pays to out-of-network providers.
Prescription drug plans are a form of insurance offered through some employer benefit plans in the US, where the patient pays a copayment and the prescription drug insurance part or all of the balance for drugs covered in the formulary of the plan.
Some, if not most, health care providers in the United States will agree to bill the insurance company if patients are willing to sign an agreement that they will be responsible for the amount that the insurance company doesn't pay. The insurance company pays out of network providers according to "reasonable and customary" charges, which may be less than the provider's usual fee. The provider may also have a separate contract with the insurer to accept what amounts to a discounted rate or capitation to the provider's standard charges. It generally costs the patient less to use an in-network provider.
Health plan vs. health insurance
Historically, HMOs tended to use the term "health plan", while commercial insurance companies used the term "health insurance". A health plan can also refer to a subscription-based medical care arrangement offered through health maintenance organization, HMO, PPO, or POS plan. These plans are similar to pre-paid dental, pre-paid legal, and pre-paid vision plans. Pre-paid health plans typically pay for a fixed number of services (for instance, $300 in preventive care, a certain number of days of hospice care or care in a skilled nursing facility, a fixed number of home health visits, a fixed number of spinal manipulation charges, etc.) The services offered are usually at the discretion of a utilization review nurse who is often contracted through the managed care entity providing the subscription health plan. This determination may be made either prior to or after hospital admission (concurrent utilization review).
[edit] Inherent problems with insurance
Insurance systems must typically deal with two inherent challenges: adverse selection, which affects any voluntary system, and ex-post moral hazard, which affects any insurance system in which a third party bears major responsibility for payment, whether that is an employer or the government. Some national systems with compulsory insurance utilize systems such as risk equalization and community rating to overcome these inherent problems.
[edit] Adverse selection
Insurance companies use the term "adverse selection" to describe the tendency for only those who will benefit from insurance to buy it. Specifically when talking about health insurance, unhealthy people are more likely to purchase health insurance because they anticipate large medical bills. On the other side, people who consider themselves to be reasonably healthy may decide that medical insurance is an unnecessary expense; if they see the doctor once a year and it costs $250, that's much better than making monthly insurance payments of $40. (example figures).
The fundamental concept of insurance is that it balances costs across a large, random sample of individuals (see risk pool). For instance, an insurance company has a pool of 1000 randomly selected subscribers, each paying $100 per month. One person becomes very ill while the others stay healthy, allowing the insurance company to use the money paid by the healthy people to pay for the treatment costs of the sick person. However, when the pool is self-selecting rather than random, as is the case with individuals seeking to purchase health insurance directly, adverse selection is a greater concern.[8] A disproportionate share of health care spending is attributable to individuals with high health care costs. In the US the 1% of the population with the highest spending accounted for 27% of aggregate health care spending in 1996. The highest-spending 5% of the population accounted for more than half of all spending. These patterns were stable through the 1970s and 1980s, and some data suggest that they may have been typical of the mid-to-early 20th century as well.[9][10] A few individuals have extremely high medical expenses, in extreme cases totaling a half million dollars or more.[11] Adverse selection could leave an insurance company with primarily sick subscribers and no way to balance out the cost of their medical expenses with a large number of healthy subscribers.
Because of adverse selection, insurance companies employ medical underwriting, using a patient's medical history to screen out those whose pre-existing medical conditions pose too great a risk for the risk pool. Before buying health insurance, a person typically fills out a comprehensive medical history form that asks whether the person smokes, how much the person weighs, whether the person has been treated for any of a long list of diseases and so on. In general, those who present large financial burdens are denied coverage or charged high premiums to compensate.[12] One large US industry survey found that roughly 13 percent of applicants for comprehensive, individually purchased health insurance who went through the medical underwriting in 2004 were denied coverage. Declination rates increased significantly with age, rising from 5 percent for individuals 18 and under to just under a third for individuals aged 60 to 64.[13] Among those who were offered coverage, the study found that 76% received offers at standard premium rates, and 22% were offered higher rates.[14] On the other side, applicants can get discounts if they do not smoke and are healthy.[15]
Health insurance in Canada
Most health insurance in Canada is administered by each province, under the Canada Health Act, which requires all people to have free access to basic health services. Collectively, the public provincial health insurance systems in Canada are frequently referred to as Medicare. Private health insurance is allowed, but the provincial governments allow it only for services that the public health plans do not cover; for example, semi-private or private rooms in hospitals and prescription drug plans. Canadians are free to use private insurance for elective medical services such as laser vision correction surgery, cosmetic surgery, and other non-basic medical procedures. Some 65% of Canadians have some form of supplementary private health insurance; many of them receive it through their employers.[17] Private-sector services not paid for by the government account for nearly 30 percent of total health care spending.[18]
In 2005, the Supreme Court of Quebec ruled, in Chaoulli v. Quebec, that the province's prohibition on private insurance for health care already insured by the provincial plan could constitute an infringement of the right to life and security if there were long wait times for treatment as happened in this case. Certain other provinces have legislation which financially discourages but does not forbid private health insurance in areas covered by the public plans. The ruling has not changed the overall pattern of health insurance across Canada but has spurred on attempts to tackle the core issues of supply and demand and the impact of wait times.[19]
Health insurance in the Netherlands
In the Netherlands in 2006, a new system of health insurance came into force. All insurance companies have to provide at least one policy which meets a government set minimum standard level of cover and all adult residents are obliged by law to purchase this cover from an insurance company of their choice.
The new system avoids the two pitfalls of adverse selection and moral hazard associated with traditional forms of health insurance.
In the Dutch system, insurance companies are compensated for taking on high risk individuals because they receive extra funding for them. This funding comes from an insurance equalization pool run by a regulator which collects salary based contributions from employers (about 45% of all health care funding) and funding from the government for people whose means are such that they cannot afford health care (about 5% of all funding). Thus insurance companies find that insuring high risk individuals becomes an attractive proposition. All insurance companies receive from the pool, but those with more high risk individuals will receive more from the fund. The remaining 45% of health care funding comes from insurance premiums paid by the public. Insurance companies compete for this money on price alone. The insurance companies are not allowed to set down any co-payments or caps or deductibles. Neither are they allowed to deny coverage to any person applying for a policy or charge anything other than their nationally set and internet published standard policy premiums. Every person buying insurance from that company will pay the same price as everyone else buying that policy. And every person will get the minimum level of coverage. Children under 18 are insured for free (the funding coming from the equalization pool).
In addition to this minimum level, companies are free to sell extra insurance for additional coverage over the national minimum, but extra risks for this are not covered from the insurance pool and must therefore be priced accordingly.
Health insurance in the United Kingdom
Main article: National Health Service
Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) is a publicly funded healthcare system that provides coverage to everyone normally resident in the UK. The NHS provides the majority of health care in England, including primary care, in-patient care, long-term health care, ophthalmology and dentistry. Private health care has continued parallel to the NHS, paid for largely by private insurance, but it is used by less than 8% of the population, and generally as a top-up to NHS services. Recently the private sector has been increasingly used to increase NHS capacity despite a large proportion of the British public opposing such involvement.[20]. According to the World Health Organization, government funding covered 86% of overall health care expenditures in the UK as of 2004, with private expenditures covering the remaining 14%.[21] The costs of running the NHS (est. £104 billion in 2007-8)[22] are met directly from general taxation.
The National Health Service Act 1946 came into effect on 5 July 1948. The UK government department responsible for the NHS is the Department of Health, headed by a Secretary of State for Health (Health Secretary), who sits in the British Cabinet. The NHS is the world's largest health service, and the world's third largest employer[23] after the Chinese army and the Indian railways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Health_ServiceHealth insurance in the United States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurancehttp://www.ahip.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_the_United_Stateshttp://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&q=health+insurance+in+England&meta=http://www.google.com.sg/search?hl=en&q=health+insurance+in+India&meta=参考资料：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_insurance_in_the_United_States