Among the various national health schemes, benefits are provided in three ways. First is the direct service approach in which the government or insurance fund owns the facilities (hospitals and clinics), pays for supplies, and remunerates the staff on a full- or part-time basis. This is the approach used in the United Kingdom for hospitals and community services and in Scandinavia, where local authorities provide hospitals and clinics, though there may also be a parallel system of doctors working from their own offices. It is also generally used in eastern Europe, in Greece, Spain, and Portugal, in most countries in Latin America, and in most other developing countries. The hospital system in Canada is exceptional; the scheme determines budgets for general hospitals that remain in the hands of not-for-profit agencies.
The second method is the indirect contract with providers. The providers may be private entities (hospitals or practitioners) or public hospitals, but the health insurance scheme makes a contract with the provider and pays each provider for services used according to rates established in a negotiated contract. This is the system used for all services in such countries as Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
The third method is reimbursement, in which the patient pays the bill and applies for reimbursement. The provider may be public or private. This approach is widely used in France, some northern European countries for the parallel system using practitioners in the private sector, and to some extent in Australia and Sweden. The patient may be left to pay part of the bill, as, for example, in France. A fee schedule may be established for rates of reimbursement, but, unless strong measures are taken to prevent it, some practitioners may charge more than the established fee.
In practice many countries use a combination of these systems. Thus, for example, the National Health Service in the United Kingdom, with its direct service provision of hospitals and community services, uses indirect contracts for general practitioners, community pharmacists, opticians, and most dentists. Moreover, where private hospitals are used they are paid under contract, as is also the case in Greece, Italy, and Portugal. In a number of countries in Latin America health insurers use the direct service approach in urban areas but service dispersed populations in rural areas by using indirect contracts.
Health insurance schemes vary in the method by which providers are paid, and this can have a substantial impact on costs. Where doctors and dentists are paid on a fee-for-service basis this provides incentives for the provision of further servicesâeven in France where the patient has to pay a proportion of the cost. In the Common Market countries about twice as many prescriptions are issued to patients when the doctor is paid on a fee-for-service basis as when he is paid on a capitation basis. More surgery is performed where doctors receive fees rather than salaries. Moreover, the patient normally has direct access to specialists and can visit several different doctors in the course of one illness; this also adds to costs. When hospitals are paid on the basis of an itemized bill, more items are often provided. Where hospitals are paid per day of care, there are incentives for the hospital to keep patients for longer than necessary. For this reason, some countries in Europe (Belgium, France, and the Netherlands) have required hospitals paid on this basis to adhere to a predetermined budget. Where hospitals are given a budget from the local or central government, costs are kept under control. Financial incentives for the provision of further services are avoided where doctors are paid on a salary or capitation basis (the Netherlands and the United Kingdom). But this can lead to delays in receiving treatment both for an inpatient and for an outpatient. A provision permitting access to specialists, normally only on the basis of referral by a general practitioner, can be enforced where the patient normally has access to only one practitioner; this helps to limit costs. The system of paying doctors part-time salaries, leaving the doctor free to undertake practice, as in Greece, Portugal, Spain, and most countries in Latin America, can lead to what patients see as poor quality in servicesâa lack of courtesy and limitation of time devoted to the consultation. For this reason many countries are beginning to offer full-time salaries without rights for the doctor to undertake private practice.
The right to free medical treatment was included in the original German scheme for industrial injury, and provision for rehabilitation was added in 1925. In the course of time more and more emphasis came to be placed on efforts to restore working capacity, and specialized institutions were created for this purpose. Many countries have copied the German example and developed highly specialized institutions owned by sick funds or under the control of the agency responsible for national health insurance for both physical and vocational rehabilitation.
Administration and finance
Administration of social security
The Social Security records office in Baltimore, Ohio, U.S., 1930s.
Harris & Ewing, Inc./Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-hec-29043)
Countries vary considerably in the extent to which their social security apparatus is centralized and unified. A high degree of centralization obtains in the Commonwealth countries and Scandinavia (except for health care and social assistance, which are decentralized to lower levels of government). A centralized scheme may be administered by a ministry or by a semiautonomous agency. In other countries schemes are more often run by separate occupational funds or by funds providing for different risks, as tends to be the pattern in continental Europe and Latin America. The control may rest with boards composed equally of employers and employees. Or it may be tripartite, with the government participating as the third party. In the United States responsibility for social security is divided between federal and state agencies. There have been attempts in some countries to secure greater unification, but such efforts have often encountered strong resistance from particular occupational groups with better benefits or lower contributions attributable to lower risks.
Employee reviewing individual Social Security accounts at the Baltimore (Ohio) Social Security office, 1937.
Harris & Ewing, Inc./Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-hec-22878)
Social security regulations have become extremely complex and difficult to understand. Where there are separate funds, each may have a national office, with no branch offices to which the public has access. Disputes often arise over which fund is responsible for paying benefits to particular claimants. It is, therefore, not necessarily the case that all claimants obtain what they are entitled to receive, and substantial delays can occur while entitlements are sorted out. Problems of this kind are not, however, unique to the public sector. Some private insurance companies are resistant to paying out claims. Unified social security systems with local offices are more accessible to the public, but the offices are not always adequately staffed to give the public prompt and efficient service.
U.S. Social Security card.
Comstock/Thinkstock
Social assistance regulations are inevitably even more complex to operate than other parts of the social security system. Moreover, they frequently contain a considerable element of discretion. Where schemes are administered by social workers there can be what beneficiaries see as potential coercion; failure to follow the social workerâs advice may be thought to lead to the reduction or removal of benefits. Some have argued that all social assistance regulations should be published so that claimants can know their rights and thus be in a position to appeal against decisions to refuse benefits or extra allowances. Adoption of this approach has led in some cases to regulations that are too complex for the staff to operate efficiently, or in others to regulations that have been streamlined at the expense of former provisions for discretion. Particularly contentious is the question of cohabitation. If an unemployed married woman living with her wage-earning husband is not entitled to social assistance, it would seem at first sight only fair that an unemployed woman cohabiting with an employed man should be treated in the same way. But cohabitation may not be accompanied by maintenance and is anyway extremely hard to define. The borderline between a lodger and a cohabitant is by no means clear-cut in all cases nor readily established by any outside agency. Attempts to do so can involve considerable invasion of personal privacy.
