Health Care in Asia: A Comparative Study of Cost and Financing

This report assembles data on health, demographic trends, health infrastructure, health personnel, and health financing across Asian countries. In a broad manner, it attempts to relate differences in spending priorities and patterns to health outcomes. This effort should be viewed as a complement to country-specific and household-level analysis. The objective of the study is to assemble data essential for making sensible public policy decisions in the health sector. It is an inductive, exploratory study. The study reviews mortality data, medical inputs, and health expenditures. It attempts to construct a health profile for the developing countries of Asia using cause-of-death information, the age structure of the populations, and related evidence. Data assembled for the years 1986 - 1987 on sources of health expenditure, health infrastructure, and related financial data are reviewed. A chapter is devoted to the discussion of user fees and insurance, the two main alternatives to tax financing of public sector curative services. The study concludes by piecing together information from many sources in an attempt to assess the degree to which public subsidies in the health sector are targeted, and to whom.