How health insurance affects the delivery of health care in developing countries

Financial crisis is a common state of affairs in the government health sector of many developing countries, and an increasing number are considering implementing user charges and insurance programs to shift some of the financial burden for health services away from direct budget allocations by a health ministry. Although they are often implemented as ways of mobilizing additional resources, prices and insurance also affect the allocation of health resources by changing the signals sent to producers and consumers of health services. Changes in incentives engendered by these alternative financing programs, therefore, have implications for the efficiency and equity of health services delivery, in addition to their more obvious impact on revenues. This paper examines institutional aspects of insurance programs in four developing countries - Brazil, China, Korea, and Zaire - and assesses the impact of each on the efficiency and equity of the health sector. Much attention is given to insurance reimbursement of hospitals because these represent the largest component of national health expenditures and are the focal point for much of the activity in the sector. The case study countries were selected because their hospitals are financed largely, and in descriptions of their health financing systems exit. Understanding how alternative financing programs have distorted the allocation of health resources and how these distortions might be mitigated is important for these countries and others considering changes to their present system of health care financing.Health Systems Development&Reform,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats,Insurance&Risk Mitigation,Health Economics&Finance

Helicopter Airborne Laser Positioning System (HALPS)

The theory of operation, configuration, laboratory, and ground test results obtained with a helicopter airborne laser positioning system developed by Princeton University is presented. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, flight data could not be completed for presentation at this time. The system measures the relative position between two aircraft in three dimensions using two orthogonal fan-shaped laser beams sweeping across an array of four detectors. Specifically, the system calculates the relative range, elevation, and azimuth between an observation aircraft and a test helicopter with a high degree of accuracy. The detector array provides a wide field of view in the presence of solar interference due to compound parabolic concentrators and spectral filtering of the detector pulses. The detected pulses and their associated time delays are processed by the electronics and are sent as position errors to the helicopter pilot who repositions the aircraft as part of the closed loop system. Accuracies obtained in the laboratory at a range of 80 ft in the absence of sunlight were + or - 1 deg in elevation; +0.5 to -1.5 deg in azimuth; +0.5 to -1.0 ft in range; while elevation varied from 0 to +28 deg and the azimuth varied from 0 to + or - 45 deg. Accuracies in sunlight were approximately 40 deg (+ or - 20 deg) in direct sunlight