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Good Practices in Health Financing : Lessons from Reforms in Low and Middle-Income CountriesThis volume focuses on nine countries that have completed, or are well along in the process of carrying out, major health financing reforms. These countries have significantly expanded their people's health care coverage or maintained such coverage after prolonged political or economic shocks. In doing so, this report seeks to expand the evidence base on good performance in health financing reforms in low- and middle-income countries. The countries chosen for the study were Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Estonia, the Kyrgyz Republic, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Tunisia, and Vietnam. With health at the center of global development policy on humanitarian as well as economic and health security grounds, the international community and developing countries are closely focused on scaling up health systems to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), improving financial protection, and ensuring long-term financing to sustain these gains. With the scaling up of aid, both donors and countries have come to realize that money alone cannot buy health gains or prevent impoverishment due to catastrophic medical bills. This realization has sent policy makers looking for reliable evidence about what works and what does not, but they have found little to guide their search.
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Better Outcomes through Health Reforms in the Russian Federation : The Challenge in 2008 and BeyondThe purpose of this discussion paper is
 to discuss selected health challenges in the Russian
 Federation, focusing on outcomes, expenditures and options
 for policy and institutional reforms in the health care
 system. The areas covered in the paper draw on recent
 studies and reports, and take into account lessons derived
 from the implementation of the World Bank-funded Health
 Reform Implementation Project (HRIP) at the federal level
 and in the Chuvash Republic and the Voronezh Oblast-the
 pilot regions of the project, over the 2005-2007 period.
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Who pays? Out-of-Pocket Health Spending and Equity Implications in the Middle East and North AfricaEnsuring affordable, effective health care and financial protection against the adverse effects of household out-of-pocket (OOP) health expenditures represents an important policy objective in most countries, yet relatively little evidence exists regarding patterns and implications of household health expenditures in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. This paper examines the scope of out-of-pocket expenditures and their implications on living standards and policy reforms in six MENA countries including Yemen, the West Bank and Gaza, Egypt, Iran, Tunisia, and Lebanon. Results show that OOP payments represent a relatively high share of total national health care financing at 49 percent on average in the MENA region as of 2006. Households pay an average of 6 percent of their total household expenditure on health. Most of this OOP is spent on medications, doctor visits and diagnostic services. Lower-income and rural households generally face greater financial risk; yet this is reversed where private health services are utilized and paid for more frequently by higher-income groups. 7 to 13 percent of households face particularly high OOP payments, or catastrophic expenditures equal to at least 10 percent of household spending. Poverty rates tend to increase by up to 20 percent after health care spending is accounted for. Results are discussed in light of ongoing policy efforts to strengthen social protection for health care.