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The purpose of this paper is to examine women homeworkers' access to healthcare services in Thailand. Specifically, it focuses on how the state's universal healthcare service, introduced in the year 2002, has responded/not responded to the needs of poor women homeworkers in Bangkok.

Data collection was done through a structured questionnaire with 415 women homeworkers from 16 districts in Bangkok, Thailand, ten in‐depth interviews and 13 group discussions.

It was found that less than half of the women homeworker respondents accessed the universal healthcare scheme. The obstacles for access include both financial (transportation cost, loss of wage) and time. Also, homeworkers need support from the community/household to access these services. Universal health services itself is not enough to ensure access to healthcare service, especially among poor and minimally educated homeworkers with small children.

The research showed the need to have multiple approaches (state‐provided services and community organizing, as well as awareness among men about their role in care work), in order to ensure universal healthcare coverage.

Universal healthcare services are considered the best way to extend healthcare services to workers in the informal economy. This paper argues that total dependence on state‐provided services does not ensure universal healthcare coverage. There is a need for additional community‐based support mechanisms to ensure access to these services.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the successes of Thailand’s healthcare system along with challenges it is facing, examining documents and policies used by those charged with developing and implementing health services.

The search pool comprised PubMed and Google Scholar from the period 2001-2015. Selection criterion for inclusion was sources dealing with out-of-pocket (OOP) expenditure and healthcare utilization in Thailand. In total, 33 studies met the criterion of containing sufficient data to be included in the meta-analysis.

The authors found a small positive effect size on OOP expenditure and healthcare utilization, obtaining values of 0.1604 (95% CI 0.1320-0.1888, p<0.0001) and 0.2788 (95% CI 0.0917-0.4659, p=0.0035), respectively.

To review and meta-analyze the literature dealing with the outcomes of Thailand’s healthcare system to understand whether Thailand’s healthcare system is achieving its mandate or not. The results of this paper can help policy makers to understand and evaluate Thailand’s healthcare system.

The Chinese society has embraced rapid social reforms since the late twentieth century, including educational and healthcare systems. The Chinese Central Government launched an ambitious health reform program in 2009 to improve service quality and provide affordable health services, regardless of individual socio-economic status. Currently, the Chinese social health insurance includes Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance, Urban Resident Basic Medical Insurance, and New Cooperative Medical Insurance for rural residents. The purpose of this paper is to measure the association between individual education level and China’s social health insurance scheme following the reform.

Using the latest (2011) China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data and multivariable logistic regression models with cross-sectional design (n=11,960), the odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI) are reported.

The authors found that education is associated with all social health insurance schemes in China after the reform (p<0.001). Residents with higher educational attainments, such as technical school (OR: 6.64, 95% CI: 5.44–8.13) or university and above (OR: 9.86, 95% CI: 8.14–11.96), are associated with UEBMI, compared with lower-educated individuals.

The Chinese Central Government announced a plan to combine all social health insurance schemes by 2020, except UEBMI, a plan with the most comprehensive financial package. Further research is needed to investigate potential disparities after unification. Policy makers should continue to evaluate China’s universal health coverage and social disparity.

This study is the first to investigate the association between residents’ educational attainment and three social health insurance schemes following the 2009 health reform. The authors suggest that educational attainment is still associated with each social health insurance coverage after the ambitious health reform.

This study aims to, in the light of the Digital Agenda for Europe (DAE) objective to provide “broadband for all”, investigate how the DAE can make use of universal service as a regulatory instrument created specifically to ensure a minimum of available and affordable electronic communications services within a competitive market.

The paper uses systematic and comparative legal analyses of the European Union (EU)’s universal service rules and contrasts them with Information Society policy measures.

There are strong commonalities between the DAE and universal service on the level of objectives. However, due to heavy reliance on the measures stimulating supply-side, there are discrepancies in the mechanisms of their achievement. At the same time, an effective use of universal service instrument by the DAE is not reasonable. In its current form, universal service does not correspond to the substantive requirements of the Information Society policy and needs to be reformed. The paper calls for additional empirical and theoretical research on the role and form of universal service in the Information Society and outlines main issues for further research.

The paper uses the perspective of the EU Information Society policy to undertake a legal analysis of the current universal service regulation. Against this backdrop, it points out obsolescence of individual elements of the scope and logical deficiencies of the review mechanism.

Reducing health inequalities between the poor and the rich is one of the challenges that the Iranian healthcare sector is facing. One of the goals of the Iranian Government in the Healthcare Sector Evolution Plan (HSEP) is claimed to be creating an opportunity for the poor to use inexpensive services. The purpose of this paper is to provide an analysis of the status of the poor in the HSEP. Based on this evaluation, the authors will provide policy recommendations to improve the benefits of the HSEP for the poor people.

This paper is based on a qualitative study conducted in 2017. The research sample includes policymakers, experts and scholars at the macro-level of the Iranian healthcare system who were well-aware of the financial support for the poor. Overall, 35 semi-structured interviews were carried out. Data were analyzed based on the thematic analysis method.

The effects of the HSEP on the poor were studied in terms of their positive outcomes and challenges. Despite the achievements of the HSEP for all people, the most important challenge was the lack of targeted state subsidies for the poor. These subsidies should have included free insurance coverage, reducing inpatient payment and allocation of a separate budget for the poor.

Adopting some policies to target public health subsidies toward the poor such as free insurance specific for the poor (based on means testing), as well as user fee exemption and waivers could improve access to health services for them in Iran. In addition, separate funding for such policies, strengthening health prevention and health care services for marginalized populations, and improving their health literacy could help ensure the poor’s benefiting more from the health care services.

This paper aims to analyse health reforms carried out in a sample of European countries.

Using a country‐specific approach, outstanding health reform features such as: greater competition between sickness funds in Germany; fund‐holding practices in the UK; managed care models in Switzerland; health networks in France; and healthcare system decentralisation in Italy are analysed.

There have been different approaches to controlling healthcare costs. Some states relied on public sector competition by creating quasi‐markets (UK), insurance sector competition, particularly in Switzerland and Germany, organisational reforms in France by creating health networks and decentralisation in Italy.

Societal and legal aspects are not discussed.

The paper compares healthcare reform effectiveness in a number of western European countries.

The purpose of this paper is to present the main results of a comparative policy analysis about the introduction and development of digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom and Spain.

After outlining the main policy responses forged in each case study, different national DTT models are suggested, described and compared. Similarities and differences are summarized and, finally, a conclusion is offered to explain why the service unfolded uniquely in each country.

The economic and technological dynamics of the television industry as a whole affected differently the development of DTT in the case studied since they were mediated by particular socio‐political systems.

Owing to the fact that the paper presents a summary of a major research project, it does not offer in‐depth detail of the main findings.

The study belongs to the expanding area of comparative research and adopts a case study approach.

This study aims to present a comprehensive integrative review of capitation payment for primary healthcare (PHC) in the Indonesian national health insurance (Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional,JKN).

Whittemore and Knafl’s integrative review method is used within this review and analysis framework. Multiple types of academic literature were included in this review, including all studies related to capitation payment in the JKN from 2014 until 2022.

This review found that several practices of capitation payments in the JKN in Indonesia deviate from basic economic concept of capitation. It does not yet incentivize PHC to create a competitive environment in attracting members and it does not incentivize health promotion and prevention. Moreover, the capitation model uses the same scope of primary care services for all PHC throughout the country – which in fact has disparities in providing 155 medical conditions as required competencies for PHC. The authors recommend that the JKN apply bottom-up costing and pricing methods to set market prices of capitation rates.

This is the first study that reviews theory-practice gap of the capitation payment model using an integrative review that covers academic literature, journal articles and regulations in Indonesia.

The aim of this paper is to discover the views of Michael Porter and Elizabeth Teisberg on redefining value in health care.

The paper is in the form of an interview with Michael Porter and Elizabeth Teisberg with reference to their book Redefining Health Care: Creating Value‐based Competition on Results.

The paper reveals the subjects of cost, quality and access have reached crisis proportions in health care services and thus a value‐based competition approach would alleviate this.

The interview provides useful information on the redefinition of value in health care