Costs are shared when more than one party pays towards the total costs, or accounted for separately across a number of activities or

project A project is a type of assignment, typically involving research or design, that is carefully planned to achieve a specific objective. An alternative view sees a project managerially as a sequence of events: a "set of interrelated tasks to be ...

s. In

health care Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...

, cost sharing occurs when patients pay for a portion of

health care costs A health system, health care system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers health care services to meet the health needs of target populations. There is a wide variety of health systems aroun ...

not covered by

health insurance Health insurance or medical insurance (also known as medical aid in South Africa) is a type of insurance that covers the whole or a part of the risk of a person incurring medical expenses. As with other types of insurance, risk is shared among ma ...

. The "out-of-pocket" payment varies among healthcare plans and depends on whether or not the patient chooses to use a healthcare provider who is contracted with the healthcare plan's network. Examples of out-of-pocket payments involved in cost sharing include

copay A patient's copayment or copay is the patient's share of the cost for goods or services rendered, with the other share ("co" = with) paid by the patient's insurance company. The patient's co-payment is usually paid directly to the provider, but is ...

deductible In an insurance policy, the deductible (in British English, the excess) is the amount paid Out-of-pocket expenses, out of pocket by the policy holder before an insurance provider will pay any expenses. In general usage, the term ''deductible'' m ...

s, and

coinsurance In insurance, co-insurance or coinsurance is the splitting or spreading of risk among multiple parties. In the United States In the U.S. insurance market, co-insurance is the joint assumption of risk between the insurer and the insured. In titl ...

. In

accounting Accounting, also known as accountancy, is the process of recording and processing information about economic entity, economic entities, such as businesses and corporations. Accounting measures the results of an organization's economic activit ...

, cost sharing or matching means that portion of project or program costs not borne by the funding agency. It includes all contributions, including cash and in-kind, that a recipient makes to an award. If the award is federal, only acceptable non-federal costs qualify as cost sharing and must conform to other necessary and reasonable provisions to accomplish the program objectives. Cost sharing effort is included in the calculation of total committed effort. Effort is defined as the portion of time spent on a particular activity expressed as a percentage of the individual's total activity for the institution. Cost sharing can be audited and must be allowable under cost principles and verifiable to records. Costs may also be divided across activities or projects even if paid for by the same organisation, for example where a

charity Charity may refer to: Common meanings * Charitable organization or charity, a non-profit organization whose primary objectives are philanthropy and social well-being of persons * Charity (practice), the practice of being benevolent, giving and sha ...

shares the allocation of its fixed costs between different grants or funding schemes. Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy
Support Costs and the Charities SORP - Discussion Briefing
published August 2021], accessed 15 November 2023 A

cost-sharing mechanism In economics and mechanism design, a cost-sharing mechanism is a process by which several agents decide on the scope of a public product or service, and how much each agent should pay for it. Cost-sharing is easy when the marginal cost is constant ...

is a

truthful mechanism In mechanism design, a strategyproof (SP) mechanism is a game form in which each player has a weakly- dominant strategy, so that no player can gain by "spying" over the other players to know what they are going to play. When the players have privat ...

for deciding what agents should be served by a public project, and how much each of them should pay.

Sources

* Dehez, P., & Tellone, D. (2013)
Data games: Sharing public goods with exclusion
''Journal of Public Economic Theory'', ''15''(4), 654-673.

References

Health economics Health insurance {{econ-term-stub