Financial payment systems and asthma care

This paper addresses how medical care financing issues may impact on the process and outcome of asthma care. Because asthma-specific data are scarce, an attempt has been made to extrapolate from an understanding of payment issues for chronic illness in general to the specific case of asthma. First, some broad features of the effect of payment systems on health care delivery are reviewed. How financing of care for the individual patient affects financial access to care is then examined. Next, financing of care at the provider level is discussed, and fee-for-service and prepaid systems are compared with respect to how individual patients with chronic illness may be treated differently. Financing at the health insurance plan level, particularly with regard to benefits and quality of care, then is explored. Finally, knowledge gaps are highlighted, as are some of the difficulties encountered in investigating this topic.