Summary: | Governments often look to private health insurance (PHI) as a possible means of addressing some health system challenges. For example, they may consider enhancing its role as an alternative source of health financing and a way to increase system capacity, or promoting it as a tool to further additional health policy goals, such as enhanced individual responsibility. Yet private health insurance is a complex financing mechanism that affects and interacts with public systems in multiple ways. This is why, when assessing the current and potential role for private health insurance, policy makers need to consider the intricate interactions arising between public and private coverage, and the effects that PHI has upon ..
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