Out-of-pocket expenditure, need, utilisation, and private health insurance in the Australian healthcare system.

Despite widespread public service provision, public funding, and private health insurance (PHI), 20% of all healthcare expenditure across the OECD is covered by out-of-pocket expenditure (OOPE). This creates an equity concern for the increasing number of individuals with chronic conditions and greater need, particularly if higher need coincides with lower income. Theoretically, individuals may mitigate OOPE risk by purchasing PHI, replacing variable OOPE with fixed expenditure on premiums.

Spillover effects of retirement: Does health vulnerability matter?

The current literature investigating the impact of retirement and the associated spousal spillover effects overlooks the unintended effects of retirement on spouses in vulnerable health, namely spouses with long-term health conditions (LTHCs). In this paper, we fill this gap in the literature and investigate the impact of an individual's retirement on their partner's health outcomes when their partner has LTHCs. Given the inherent identification challenges associated with entry into retirement, we use the pension-qualifying age in Australia as an instrument.

Relative health performance in BRICS over the past 20 years: the winners and losers.

Objective: To determine whether the health performance of Brazil, the Russian Federation, India, China and South Africa--the countries known as BRICS--has kept in step with their economic development.

Methods: Reductions in age- and sex-specific mortality seen in each BRICS country between 1990 and 2011 were measured. These results were compared with those of the best-performing countries in the world and the best-performing countries with similar income levels.

Identifying covariates of population health using extreme bound analysis.

Background: The literature is full of lively discussion on the determinants of population health outcomes. However, different papers focus on small and different sets of variables according to their research agenda. Because many of these variables are measures of different aspects of development and are thus correlated, the results for one variable can be sensitive to the inclusion/exclusion of others.

Will China's Cooperative Medical System fail again? Insight from farmer satisfaction survey.

This paper studied the sustainability of China's New Rural Cooperative Medical System (NCMS) by evaluating the satisfaction rate of its participants-the farmers. The study related the overall satisfaction of the farmers to their satisfaction with the four different aspects of the program. It also identified which personal and program attributes affect the farmers' satisfaction rate.

Does donor assistance for HIV respond to media pressure?

HIV/AIDS is a heavily mediatised disease. In this article, we test whether media attention is affecting donors' disbursement of aid for HIV to African countries. We use information available on the number of articles and press documents on HIV issues and other health concerns published in donor countries to construct a proxy of media coverage.

Has HIV/AIDS displaced other health funding priorities? Evidence from a new dataset of development aid for health.

In recent times there has been a sense that HIV/AIDS control has been attracting a significantly larger portion of donor health funding to the extent that it crowds out funding for other health concerns. Although there is no doubt that HIV/AIDS has absorbed a large share of development assistance for health (DAH), whether HIV/AIDS is actually diverting funding away from other health concerns has yet to be analyzed fully. To fill this vacuum, this study aims to test if a higher level of HIV/AIDS funding is related to a displacement in funding for other health concerns, and if yes, to quantify the magnitude of the displacement effect.

The income-climate trap of health development: a comparative analysis of African and Non-African countries.

This article conducts a comparative analysis of the interrelationship between climate, life expectancy and income between African and non-African countries. To put the analysis in a broader context of development, the paper develops an income-climate trap model that explains the multi-directional interaction between income, climate and life expectancy. It is suggested that the interaction can give rise to either a virtuous cycle of prosperity or a vicious cycle of poverty.

Measuring health inequality with realization of potential life years (RePLY).

This paper proposes a new method to measure health inequalities that are caused by conditions amenable to policy intervention. The method is built on a technique that can separate avoidable and unavoidable mortality risks, using world mortality data compiled by the World Health Organization for the year 2000. The new method is applied to data from 191 countries.

Avoidable mortality risks and measurement of wellbeing and inequality.

This paper proposes a data envelopment method to separate avoidable and unavoidable mortality risks. As unavoidable mortality is either beyond the control of humanity or likely to be very cost-ineffective to reduce in the short to medium term, avoidable mortality is of much greater practical relevance in measuring wellbeing and inequality. The new method is applied to a dataset consisting of life tables for 191 countries in the year 2000 to obtain a reference distribution of unavoidable mortality risks.

Measuring health inequalities between genders and age groups with realization of potential life years (RePLY).

Objective: We propose a new method to measure health inequalities caused by conditions amenable to policy intervention and use this to identify health differences between sexes and age groups.

Methods: The lowest observed mortality rates are used as a proxy of unavoidable mortality risks to develop a new measure of health outcome - realization of potential life years (RePLY). The RePLY distribution is used to measure avoidable health inequalities between sex and age groups respectively.