Health Policy and the Public Interest

This book offers both a theoretical treatment of health policy as well as practical assessment of various healthcare reform proposals and healthcare systems in different countries. It begins with a distinction between functional health and the stock of health and their determinants, and offers an intuitively appealing framework to understand their determinants under conditions of uncertainty.

Lok-sang Ho, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies, Lingnan University, is the author of Principles of Public Policy Practice and Health Care Financing and Delivery: A Model for Reform, and has published about 90 academic papers in journals and book chapters. Prof. Ho has been active in community and professional service. He served as President of the HK Economic Association for eight years through 2007. He has been a member of the Standing Commission on Civil Service Salaries and Conditions of Service since 2006. He had also served as an Advisor for the Hong Kong Institute of Monetary Research, a member of HK Committee of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council, and part time member of the Central Policy Unit of the Hong Kong SAR Government. Before his appointment at Lingnan University in 1995 he was Senior Lecturer at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, which he joined in 1983 following a career in the Ontario Government and the Ontario Economic Council as Economist and Research Officer. He holds a Ph.D from the University of Toronto and is a graduate of the University of Hong Kong. He writes a weekly column in China Daily, HK edition, occasional columns in SCMP, Oriental Daily, among others, and contributes to Seeking Alpha on international economic affairs as an author.

1. Functional Health and the Health Stock 2. A Framework for Risk and Health Policy Analysis 3. Insurance, Moral Hazard, and Adverse Selection 4. Health Policy Evaluation 5. Health Policy in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan 6. Publicly Funded Healthcare Systems: UK and Canada 7. Singapore: Medisave, Medishield, Medifund, and Elderfund 8. Universal Publicly Funded Basic Healthcare in Australia and New Zealand 9. Three European Countries: France, Switzerland, and Sweden 10. The American Market-based System 11. The Way Forward