A.L. MANSON, N. CHAPMAN, Y. WEDATILAKE, M. BALIC, H. MARWAY, S.L. SENEVIRATNE and P. HOLLOWAY From the Department of Clinical Immunology, St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London W2 1NY, Department of Clinical Pharmacology, St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, London W2 1PG, Department of Chemical Pathology, St Mary’s Hospital, Imperial College Hea...

Forest and colleagues have persuasively made the case that policy capacity is a fundamental prerequisite to health reform. They offer a comprehensive life-cycle definition of policy capacity and stress that it involves much more than problem identification and option development. I would like to offer a Canadian perspective. If we define health reform as re-orienting the health system from acut...

New governance practices associated wit the modernisation of health systems within Europe focus on equipping health consumers with more information and power in their interactions with clinicians. This paper uses material on health care reform in Britain and Germany to highlight ways in which consumerism is refracted through different institutional histories and current political projects. Thes...

This article analyzes the historical and contemporary development of the Argentine health care system from the viewpoint of equity, a principle which is not explicitly mentioned in the system's founding documents. However, other values can be identified such as universal care, accessibility, and solidarity, which are closely related to equity. Nevertheless, the political dynamics characterizing...

This paper reports on a re-evaluation of the German health care reform of 1997. A previous evaluation found a limited effect of a 4.4 percent reduction of the number of doctor visits in a sample of pharmacy customers. The re-evaluation based on a representative household survey, the German Socio-Economic Panel, yields a much larger effect. The paper uses this case study to discuss the methods a...

From the moment I took office, the central challenge we have confronted as a nation has been to recover and rebuild from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. We’ve taken extraordinary steps to repair the immediate damage and lay the foundation for an economy built to last. And a critical first step on this journey has been taking action to restore health care as a basic pillar ...

The possibility of health care reform has helped focus attention on equity in the receipt of health care. This is a particular issue for the Medicaid program, as State variations in eligibility and payment policies have historically created inequity. This study examines equity for Medicaid beneficiaries and State taxpayers during the latter 1980s. Findings indicate that federally mandated expan...

The United States leads all industrialized countries in the share of national health care expenditures devoted to insurance administration. The U.S. share is over 30 percent greater than Germany's and more than three times that of Japan. This issue brief examines the sources of administrative costs and describes how a private-public approach to health care reform--with the central feature of a ...

Healthcare reforms aim to change certain parts of the health system to improve quality of care, access, or financial sustainability. Traditionally, healthcare reform is understood as an action undertaken by a government at a national or local level. However, bottom-up changes can also lead to improvements in the health system. This paper describes the efforts of a coordinated multi-stakeholder ...

Beginning on March 26, 2012, the Supreme Court of the United States heard oral arguments regarding challenges to the recent federal health care reform legislation. The Court scheduled this unusually lengthy series of arguments to last for three days—a reflection of both the high stakes and the complexity of the legal issues involved. Whatever the Court ultimately decides, the outcome will have ...