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Should Israel be concerned by the high proportion of medical care paid for privately: comments from a U.S. perspective

Overview of attention for article published in Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, March 2016
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  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (83rd percentile)
  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (60th percentile)

Mentioned by

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1 news outlet
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1 X user

Citations

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3 Dimensions

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9 Mendeley
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Title
Should Israel be concerned by the high proportion of medical care paid for privately: comments from a U.S. perspective
Published in
Israel Journal of Health Policy Research, March 2016
DOI 10.1186/s13584-016-0068-5
Pubmed ID
Authors

Stuart Altman

Abstract

As a frequent visitor to Israel, I am keenly aware of the concerns of many Israelis that limits in government funding is forcing a high proportion of the country's medical care to be paid by private sources. Frequently used statistics suggested that close to 40 % of health care is paid for by private funds and that this generates inequalities in terms of access to needed services. The results of a recent IJHPR paper by Engelcin-Nissan and Shmueli cast some doubts on these concerns although they do suggest some degree of inequality in access to needed care. The authors suggest that a better measure of the proportion of private uses of care is not 39 % but about 15 %. And that for some essential medical services it is much lower; in particular, it is less than 10 % for primary care. On the other hand, the study indicates that, in 2009, 15 % of hospitalizations had some private funding. Moreover, a related study has indicated that in 2014 60 % of surgeries were supported by private funds. The authors raise additional concerns that sicker individuals and those with higher income are more likely to use private financing. Whether this level of private spending and its concentration on sicker and higher income individuals violates the commitment of equity and fairness is up to the citizens of Israel. For those of us in the U.S. we only wish our level of inequality was so low. In making the decision on what Israel should do about its inequality it would be helpful to understand why individuals use private funding for services that are covered by the national health insurance system. And, most importantly does using a different source of funds (private versus public) impact on the health outcomes of the care involved. This issue is particularly relevant with respect to the very high use of private financing for surgeries.

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X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profile of 1 X user who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 9 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 9 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 2 22%
Student > Doctoral Student 2 22%
Student > Master 1 11%
Unknown 4 44%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Nursing and Health Professions 3 33%
Economics, Econometrics and Finance 2 22%
Unknown 4 44%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 10. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 14 April 2016.
All research outputs
#2,947,978
of 22,858,915 outputs
Outputs from Israel Journal of Health Policy Research
#63
of 578 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#49,161
of 299,390 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Israel Journal of Health Policy Research
#4
of 10 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 22,858,915 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done well and is in the 86th percentile: it's in the top 25% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 578 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 5.5. This one has done well, scoring higher than 88% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 299,390 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done well, scoring higher than 83% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 10 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 6 of them.