Health Insurance Reforms in Asia

Health Insurance Reforms in Asia empirically examines health care financing reforms and popular responses in three major cities in East Asia: Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. It adopts a new revised version of the theory of historical institutionalism to compare and explain the divergent reform paths in these three places over the past three decades. It also examines forces that propel institutional change.

The book provides three detailed case studies on the development of health care financing reforms and the politics of implementing them. It shows that health care systems in Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong were the products of Western presence in the nineteenth century. The book illustrates how greater attention is paid to the roles played by ideas, actors, and environmental triggers without abandoning the core assumptions that political institutions and policy feedback remain central to impact health care financing reforms. It demonstrates that health care financing reform is shaped by a complex interplay of forces over time and provides the most updated material about these reforms in Shanghai, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

The central argument of Health Insurance Reforms in Asia is that health care financing reform is both an evolving process responding to changing circumstances and a political process revealing an intricate interplay of power relationships and diverse interests. It shows that institutional changes in the health care financing system can be incremental but transformative in nature. The book argues that social policies will continue to develop and welfare states will continue to adapt and evolve in order to cope with new risks and needs.

This work sheds new light on understanding the politics of health care financing reform and the sources and modes of institutional change.