1. Why private health insurance? Sarah Thomson, Anna Sagan and Elias Mossialos; 2. Private finance publicly subsidized: the case of Australian health insurance Jane Hall, Denzil G. Fiebig and Keens van Gool; 3. Private health insurance in Brazil, Egypt and India Maria Dolores Montoya Diaz, Noah Haber, Philipa Mladovsky, Emma Pitchforth, Wael Fayek Saleh and Flavia Mori Sarti; 4. Private health insurance in Canada Jeremiah Hurley and G. Emmanuel Guindon; 5. Regulating private health insurance: France's attempt at getting it all Agnès Couffinhal and Carine Franc; 6. Statutory and private health insurance in Germany and Chile: two stories of coexistence and conflict Stefanie Ettelt and Andres Roman-Urrestarazu; 7. Uncovering the complex role of private health insurance in Ireland Brian Turner and Samantha Smith; 8. Integrating public and private insurance in the Israeli health system: an attempt to reconcile conflicting values Shuli Brammli-Greenberg, Ruth Waitzberg and Revital Gross; 9. Private health insurance in Japan, Republic of Korea and Taiwan, China Soonman Kwon, Naoki Ikegami and Yue-Chune Lee; 10. The role of private health insurance in financing health care in Kenya David Muthaka; 11. Private health insurance in the Netherlands Hans Maarse and Patrick Jeurissen; 12. The challenges of pursuing private health insurance in low- and middle-income countries: lessons from South Africa Di McIntyre and Heather McLeod; 13. Undermining risk pooling by individualizing benefits: the use of medical savings accounts in South Africa Heather McLeod and Di McIntyre; 14. Consumer-driven health insurance in Switzerland, where politics is governed by federalism and direct democracy Luca Crivelli; 15. Regression to the increasingly mean? Private health insurance in the United States of America Lawrence D. Brown and Sherry A Glied; 16. Health savings accounts in the United States of America Sherry A. Glied, Dan P. Ly and Lawrence D. Brown.