Introduction: The health insurance organizations in Iran are an important part of the health system. However, they are not conscious to many unnecessary costs incurred by providers and recipients, and the health system suffers from a lack of an efficient health insurance system. Therefore, it is essential to assess the performance of insurers and implement appropriate measures. This study aims to investigate the performance of Iranian health insurance organization and present solutions to the challenges.
Methods: This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed method. The quantitative part of the research is a descriptive cross-sectional study and the qualitative section is conducted through qualitative content analysis. Quantitative data were collected by a researcher-made tool and analyzed based on descriptive statistics. For the qualitative section, the focus group discussion method was used for collecting data.
Results: Quantitative results show an increase in the population covered, especially in Self-employed fund, and increase in the number of contracting providers except physicians and dentists. The analysis of indicators related to utilization of health services indicates that the distribution of health facilities varies in different provinces which Sistan and Baluchestan Province has the lowest ranking. Also, financial indicators show that overhead costs and medical expenses of health insurance organization have been rising significantly since 2014. The analysis of qualitative data led to identification of three themes including: factors affecting budget deficit, suggested solutions for health insurance organization and suggested solutions for the health system. Based on the findings, the increasing of tariffs, population covered and benefit packages coverage are the most important factors in increasing costs, which strategic purchasing and revising of basic benefit package can play a significant role in meeting challenges.
Conclusions: In recent years, the population covered by the health insurance organization and the number of contracting providers have risen, and the utilization of health services has increased. On the other hand, the costs of this organization experiencing a significant increase for various reasons. Therefore, it is vital to design and implement appropriate strategies to manage the costs.

Introduction: Today, growing increase of costs is one of the challenges for health systems. The purpose of this study is to investigate the health costs trend in Iran and the policies adopted to manage them better.
Methods: This descriptive-analytic study was carried out in two steps: 1- General review of the Iran's health system costs trend based on National Health Accounts. 2-identification of Experts views on factors lead to increasing health costs in Iran and the strategies used to manage these costs better in last few decades, through simple and accessible sampling and semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was done through deductive / inductive hybrid framework, and a thematic framework was developed during the analysis. The NVivo software was used to manage and categorize data.
Results: health costs in Iran has increased over the past years, and various strategies have been used to manage these costs that Extending primary health care, expanding insurance coverage, implementing a family physician program in small towns, villages and among nomads are the most important ones.
Conclusions: Despite the adoption of some strategies to control the health costs in Iran in different periods, growing increase in health costs is a concern. Therefore, health policy makers need to make and implement appropriate polices in order to manage these costs better, while improving access, quality of service and eventually welfare of patients.

Introduction: The design of a benefit package is a key tool for directing health systems to the universal health coverage. Deciding on service prioritization takes into account information on cost-effectiveness, the impact of financial protection, and equity in access to services. To this end, health technology assessment (HTA), which has legal backing and evidence-based protocols, can be used. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the role of health technology assessment in the package of designing.
Methods: This review study has been used to collect and analyze the available evidence. The search was conducted to identify related studies in the electronic database (Cochrane Library, Scopus, PubMed, Trip and Google Scholar) without any time limit and by August 2018 with proper keywords and strategies for each database.
Results: Out of the 132 articles studied, only 2 studies were selected according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. These two studies describe the experience of Thailand and the Netherlands in the role and application of health technology assessment in determining the benefits package. The Thai study describes the hierarchy and sequence of how to determine the choice of services to be included in the benefits package, and in the Dutch study, it refers to the policy and implementation levels and the infrastructure needed to establish a health technology assessment system to determine the benefits package.
Conclusions: Given the advancement of technologies (drugs, equipment, and diagnostic tests), cost growth and the lack of resources in the health system, it is suggested to select a benefit package focusing on health technology assessment studies. HTA is useful for informing health system decision makers about package coverage because it increases transparency, participation and accountability in the process. Accordingly, a 5-step model is recommended to determine the benefits package.

Global outbreak of the coronavirus since late 2019, has had a significant impact on the global economy and in this way has affected the insurance industry regarding its role in risk management and compensation for effects of such crises. Among these, according to the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic on people’s health and livelihood, three types of insurance namely life, health and travel insurance can be considered as susceptible sectors of the insurance industry to the current crisis, which strengthens the need for research in this field. In this regard, using the descriptive exploratory qualitative research, it is shown that the coronavirus can impact on life insurance through various channels such as increase in the death risk, sale and surrender of life insurance, underwriting process and financial aspects; and on health insurance through employers' insurance costs, medical expenses, demand for new medical services and special insurance policies, as well as changes in health insurance rates. Furthermore, COVID 19 pandemic can influence on travel insurance through travel reduction, change in loss and sale market, change in demand for coverage of travel insurance, change from registration of policy sale to registration of request for change of travel date, renewal of travel insurance and change in travel insurance distribution channels.

Introduction: Awareness of benefiting from health services and its determinants is important for health care planning. In Andersen’s behavioral model, predisposing and enabling factors and factors related to need explain the use of health services. The purpose of this study is to identify the factors related to the use of inpatient services in Iran based on the mentioned model.
Methods: The present study is a secondary analysis study that was conducted based on the data of the national survey of the use of health services in 2008 and 2015. The number of sampled people was 8326 in 2008 and 5684 in 2015. Logit regression was used to examine the factors related to the use of health services.
Results: Female patients (OR=1.48, P<0.01), older patients (OR=0.01, P<0.05), patients whose needs were diagnosed by doctors or medical personnel (OR=1.98, P<0.01), patients whose head of household had higher than diploma education (OR=1.65, P<0.01), and residents of disadvantaged areas of the country (OR=1.42, P<0.05) were more likely to benefit from inpatient services. The chance of benefiting from inpatient services was higher in 2015 than in 2008 (OR=2.15, P<0.01).
Conclusion: Andersen’s Behavioral Model of Health Services can be a suitable the theoretical framework to explain the determinants of the use of inpatient health services in Iran. It is suggested that the 3 categories of factors constituting this behavioral model should be continuously considered in policies related to the use of inpatient services.