A report in the March/April Health Affairs considers the potential benefits of private health insurance in poor countries, and how this could be fostered, including through subsidies. Mark Pauly and colleagues argue that the money residents of these countries already spend out-of-pocket on health care could be used more effectively to buy health insurance, allowing families to survive medical problems without sacrificing their children's education or their stores of seed and fertilizer.

The persistent loss of physicians to lucrative jobs in developed countries is hurting India's efforts to meet the health needs of its massive and often poorly served citizenry, according to Fitzhugh Mullan's report in the March/April Health Affairs. His analysis of India's medical brain drain-almost 60,000 India-trained physicians have emigrated to wealthy nations-concludes with a call for India to do more to retain its medical talent and for industrialized countries to reduce their reliance on foreign-born physicians by boosting spending on medical education.

Also in the March/April Health Affairs, Samantha Artiga and colleagues say that more than three-fourths of the low-income adults in Utah's Primary Care Network reported needing benefits beyond the scope of their coverage. The authors say that coverage through the PCN is narrow because the state, in its 2002 Medicaid wavier, elected to finance expanded primary care soley by cutting benefits for existing Medicaid beneficiaries, rather than utilizing broader revenue sources as other states have elected to do.