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This study aims to map and analyze health-care pricing information research. This work highlights current gap in pricing information research in health care and proposes future research avenues to academia and industry professionals.

A bibliometric method was adopted to analyze extant literature on pricing information asymmetry. Semistructured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in health care to triangulate the findings.

Pricing information is crucial for all stakeholders including health-care consumers, providers and regulators. The popular research areas were the rising health-care cost, cost-saving, outcome-based pricing, price based on service supply and demand, insurance and out-of-pocket spending. Cost–quality perceived linkages, cost–demand correlation in health-care service and cost–price interlinked drivers were the dominant themes in extant literature. The study highlighted that pricing information asymmetry pushed patients from weaker sections into a debt trap due to unplanned out-of-pocket health-care expenses. The study suggests areas of research to minimize this pricing information asymmetry.

The emerging themes in health pricing asymmetry will help key stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and take remedial actions in the health-care domain.

This study is a pioneering effort to summarize extant literature published in the health-care information pricing domain and analyze it from a bibliometric perspective. The study also triangulates the finding with primary data from key stakeholders and highlights emerging research areas.

The purpose of this study is to explore and prioritize the factors that determine the social insurance contribution of unorganized workers.

A two-stage procedure was adopted to recognize and prioritize factors influencing the social insurance participation of unorganized workers: first, crucial factors influencing unorganized workers’ contribution towards social insurance were identified by employing exploratory factor analysis, and in the second phase, the fuzzy analytical hierarchal process was applied to rank the specified criteria and then sub-criteria by assigning weights.

Four broad factors were identified, namely, economic, political, operational and socio-psychological, that significantly influence unorganized workers’ contribution towards social insurance. Later findings revealed that the prime influencer of unorganized workers’ contribution is employment contracts followed by average earnings, delivery of quality services, eligibility and accessibility.

The research findings are feasible as the basic propositions are based on real-world scenario. The identification and ranking of factors have the potential to be used as a checklist for policymakers when designing pension and social insurance for unorganized workers. If it is not possible to consider all, the criteria and sub-criteria assigned upper rank can be given priority to extend pension coverage for a large group of working poor.

The key factors driving social insurance contributions have been highlighted by studying the stakeholders’ perceptions at a micro level. By comprehending the challenges, there is a possibility of covering a large section of the working poor into social insurance coverage.

This paper is believed to be one of its kinds to acknowledge a combination of factors that determine the contribution of unorganized workers to social insurance. This study is an empirical investigation to prioritize the essential drivers of social insurance participation by low-income cohorts in the context of emerging countries. The present approach of employing fuzzy logic has also very limited use in social insurance literature yet.

The paper demonstrates prejudicial effects of the rising private participation and the lacuna of state in ensuring the accessibility and affordability of healthcare.

Secondary data analysis from national and international databases is employed to demonstrate the low government spending and the alternate healthcare financing mechanisms in the country. The company reports of six Indian pharma companies are examined to map the profits and revenues, and also taking into account the sales growth and return on investment.

The paper observes the pharmaceutical sector, via its spiralling drug prices, is the primary contributor to the huge out-of-pocket expenses borne by households. The study findings indicate that there is an increased divergence between the out-of-pocket expenses of households and exorbitant profits of the private drug companies in the country over the years.

Amidst debates on the importance of public health in the aftermath of the pandemic, the paper examines the rising hands of private sector in healthcare, and implores – who benefits? The authors study the implications via looking into the rise in the wealth of pharma giants; at the time of crisis when the lives of common citizens in the country were at stake.

The paper emphasises the repercussions of the higher markup of the pharma industry in raising the healthcare costs of households. The authors emphasise that the nonregulation of the pharma sector leads to high medical debts/poverty, in the wake of growing out-of-pocket expenditures of the citizens.

This study aims to calculate the inequity in out of pocket expenditures and utilization of laboratory tests in Iran. Equal access to health services is an important part of human rights in health care. Out-of-pocket payment is a part of financial access to health care. In this study, the authors tried to find inequity in out-of-pocket payments and utilization of medical laboratory tests (MLTs) as a part of human rights in Iran in 2016.

Gini and concentration indices were calculated for this purpose, and regression models were estimated to show the relationship between different factors and utilization and out-of-pocket.

The average out-of-pocket payment for all of the households was US$1.56 (urban areas: 1.97 and rural areas: 1.31). Moreover, the average utilization of MLTs was 0.079 (urban areas: 0.0908 and rural areas: 0.0753). Gini and concentration indices for out-of-pocket payments were 0.522 and 0.0701, respectively.

Out-of-pocket and utilization were low in lower in less developed regions of ease and southeast regions of the country and were related to access to health insurance, income and wealth deciles.

The purpose of this study was to see the impact of increased out-of-pocket expenditure oh health care exerting budget pressure on households, which leads to change in dietary consumption.

It was a hospital-based cross-sectional study comprising 414 patients with a chronic or major illness attending a large tertiary care public hospital at Delhi, India. Each patient represented a household with total number of family members of 2,550 in the study. Questionnaire was used to gather data on factors responsible for changes in consumption of 12 major food items.

Moderate decrease in food consumption of a household after major illness is associated with: rural residence (p < 0.001), decrease in savings (p < 0.001), more number of household items sold (p < 0.001), education of the children affected (p < 0.001), upper socio-economic status (SES) (p < 0.001) and children started working after illness in family (p = 0.043). In addition to decrease in food items, there was also deterioration in quality of food preparation. More than 80% of the families did not change the intake of cereals (rice and wheat), pulses and sugar. Food items that were decreased by most families were fruits, followed by milk and its products, vegetables, meat and egg, oils and ghee.

This study is a subset of other two studies previously published. The authors had not been able to cover this aspect fully in those two studies but understood the importance of impact of expenditure on illness on food consumption. The authors studied change in food consumption pattern (not amount) in subjects after illness. The impact of weather changes in food consumption on the impacted nutritional status of family has not been studied. The authors only collected cross-sectional, observational data and recall bias cannot be completely ruled out and corrected. With such data, only associations could be concluded, not causality. The illness condition of a household was measured by presence of chronic disease and inpatient treatment. Such measures did not take into account the types of illness and number of episodes. Data of this study cannot capture whether food intake of family prior to illness was sufficient/in excess/deficient. The Kuppuswamy scale, mostly used in urban and peri-urban settings, was also used for rural subjects in the study, which might have resulted in impaired capture of rural SES. The authors did not assess whether families were allocated food grains by schemes like public distribution system, which might have resulted in biased decrease in food consumption. Questionnaire used was not validated.

This study demonstrates the various factors that act as barriers to proper food consumption, including non-financial factors. The policy of user fee in government is hitting poorer section, and equity and access to health are compromised. Health expenditure should be increased by public sector policies to implement uniform healthcare. There is need for more studies to identify measures that could be put in place when designing policies and interventions for the uniform distribution of benefits.

The policy of user fee in government is hitting poorer section, and equity and access to health are compromised. Health expenditure should be increased by public-sector policies to implement uniform healthcare.

Major or chronic illness affects money acquisition and priorities of expenditure, resulting in deterioration in quality of food consumption and by a household.

The study aims to address a critical gap in existing healthcare payment schemes and care service pricing by recognizing the influential role of patients' decisions on self-management efforts. These decisions not only impact health outcomes but also shape the demand for care, subsequently influencing care costs. Despite the significance of this interplay, current payment schemes often overlook these dynamics. The research focuses on investigating the implications of a novel behavior-based payment scheme, designed to align incentives and establish a direct connection between patients' decisions and care costs. The primary objective is to comprehensively understand whether and how this innovative payment scheme structure influences key stakeholders, including patients, care providers, insurers and overall social welfare.

In this paper, we propose a game-theoretical model to incorporate the performance of self-management with the demand for healthcare service, compare the patient's effort decision for self-management and provider's price decision for healthcare service under a behavior-based scheme with that under two implemented widely payment schemes, that is, co-payment scheme and co-insurance scheme.

Our findings confirm that the behavior-based scheme incentives patient self-management more than current schemes while reducing their possibility of seeking healthcare service, which indirectly induces the provider to lower the price of the service. The stakeholders' utility under various payment schemes is sensitive to the cost of treatment and the perceived health utility of patients. Especially, patient health awareness is not always benefited provider profit, as it motivates patient self-management while diminishing the demand for care.

We provide a novel framework for characterizing behavior-based payment schemes. Our results confirm the need for modification of the current payment scheme to incentivize patient self-management.

The empirical analysis dealt in this paper emphasizes on the impact of military expenditures on out of pocket (OOP) healthcare payments. A sizeable body of defence economics literature has investigated the trade-off between military and public health expenditure, by testing the crowding-out or growth-stimulating hypothesis; does military expenditure scaling up crowd-out or promote governmental resources for social and welfare programs, including also state health financing?

In this study, panel data from 2000 to 2018 for 129 countries is used to examine the impact of military expenditure on OOP healthcare payments. The dataset of countries is categorized into four income-groups based on World Bank's income-group classification. Dynamic panel data methodology is applied to meet study objectives.

The findings of this study indicate that military expenditure positively affects OOP payments in all the selected groups of countries, strongly supporting in this way the crowding-out hypothesis whereby increased military expenditure reduces the public financing on health. Study econometric results are robust since different and alternative changes in specifications and samples are applied in our analysis.

Under the economic downturn backdrop for several economies in the previous decade and on the foreground of a potential limited governmental fiscal space related to the Covid-19 pandemic adverse economic effects, this study provides evidence that policy-makers have to adjust their government policy initiatives and prioritize Universal Health Coverage objectives. Consequently, the findings of this study reflect the necessity of governments as far as possible to moderate military expenditures and increase public financing on health in order to strengthen health care systems efficiency against households OOP spending for necessary healthcare utilization.

Despite the fact that a sizeable body of defence economics literature has extensively examined the impact of military spending on total and public health expenditures, nevertheless to the best of our knowledge there is no empirical evidence of any direct effect of national defence spending on the main private financing component of health systems globally; the OOP healthcare payments.

Advertisements often use fear appeals to encourage prevention focused behaviors. This approach has been somewhat successful in changing attitudes and behaviors, often encouraging consumers to secede from behaviors such as smoking or to adopt preventative behaviors such as engaging in health screenings. However, health-care marketers have been less successful in efforts to reduce obesity. The obesity crisis has led to an abundance of marketing communications designed to influence weight loss. Many of these focus on fear of physical health risks associated with being overweight which have a certain degree of uncertainty surrounding them. This study aims to examine financial threats that have lower perceptions of uncertainty, and the differential impact this type of threat has on elements of the Extended Parallel Process Model (EPPM).

A 2 × 2 experimental design is used to examine the differential impact of messages communicating threat of financial and physical risk on evoked fear, perceived uncertainty, perceived susceptibility, efficacy and intention to lose weight.

Overall results indicate that response to weight loss advertising varies given the type of threat presented. Results indicate that there is a greater level of uncertainty associated with physical health threats than that with financial threats. Moreover, even though individuals were more fearful of and felt more susceptible to physical threats, when they believed that the recommended behavior was feasible, financial threat was more influential.

To encourage weight loss and intentions to lose weight advertising in practice and advertising research primarily focus on the physical health risks associated with being overweight as a motivating factor. Current research explores the impact of financial threats on attitudes and behavioral intention and finds that financial threats are perceived as more certain than physical threats, and the communication of financial threats is more salient in its effect on weight loss intentions. An opportunity for future research is to further explore the impact of uncertainty in relation to components of EPPM and how threats varying in degrees of uncertainty may impact weight loss intentions.

Reducing inequity in health between the poor and the rich is one of the challenges of the Iranian health sector. Access to health services in Iran is lower in the lowest-income quarter, and the rich use health services more. The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive framework for enabling financial access by the poor to health services in Iran.

Policy options were validated and approved by experts and specialists in two stages using the Delphi technique. The sample was consisted of 22 well-known experts on the subject who were selected based on purposive sampling. To evaluate the reliability of the questionnaire, a pilot study was conducted with five participants. Dimensional validity of the policy model, which was agreed upon by more than 75% of the participants was acceptable.

The main aspects of the model were divided into five categories: identifying the poor, policymaking to prevent the aggravation of health poverty, providing targeted funding, highlighting the importance of coherent regulation and ensuring financial accessibility to health services for the poor. This model could align the activities of all stakeholders in the form of a network and considers its prerequisites.

Prevention of dire financial consequences in the case of referral to follow up the treatment alongside exemption and financial protection policies through the networking activities of organizations involved in this field is a crucial step in securing financial support for the poor. Although the researchers included a wide range of policymakers in the Delphi study to gather all perspectives about options for financially support the poor, there may be some potential neglected policy advices.

According to Global Healthcare Security Index 2021, India ranked 66 out of 195 countries, indicating the need and scope for improvement. The Cooperative healthcare system which has been rendering exemplary services is yet to gain visible recognition in India. Given the need for upgrading the health infrastructure in India and providing more affordable health services to the country’s growing population, it would help appreciate the large role that cooperative healthcare can play along with others. This study explores the structure, conduct, and performance of healthcare co-operatives in India, the factors contributing to their success and failure, and the challenges they face. The Health Cooperatives have a strong presence in Kerala and Karnataka and are also coming up in other parts of the country. However, a detailed database of them for public awareness is very limited. The cooperative hospitals can meet the basic requirements of curative treatment in rural and poorly-endowed urban areas. The democratic way in which they function makes them a destination for a financially weaker section. They must retain this feature. The study covers two successful cases which reveal that India needs a more dense healthcare cooperative network. Since cooperative hospitals in tune with the spirit of service run on the principle of being ‘Not-for-Profit’ they need to be supported by the governments more liberally, without however interfering with their governance and administration.