Commentary on Canadian Health Insurance: Lessons for the United States

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore R. Marmor
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Insurance Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Congressional Hearings ◽  
Government Accounting ◽  
American Health Care ◽  
National Comparison ◽  
Health Insurance Industry ◽  
The Government

The Government Accounting Office's comparatively favorable report on Canada's National Health Insurance program (Medicare) prompted a firestorm of reaction: criticism from the health insurance industry primarily and praise from advocates of single-payer models of American reform particularly. Congressional hearings aired this controversy, and this article is a revised version of the author's testimony to the Government Operations Committee, June 18, 1991. The author examines the legitimacy of cross-national comparison as a general analytic tool and the lessons to be learned from North American health care comparisons in particular. In the final section he critically discusses two sets of myths about Canada's experience with universal health insurance: those regarding the desirability of the Canadian system itself and those questioning the transplantability (adaptability) of the model to the United States.

Capitalizing on Illness: The Health Insurance Industry

1974 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Bodenheimer ◽  
Steven Cummings ◽  
Elizabeth Harding
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Access To Health Care ◽  
Insurance Industry ◽  
Private Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Health Insurance Industry

The private health insurance industry in the United States began as a money-collection mechanism for hospitals and doctors, and has evolved into an important profit-making sector of the economy. Blue Cross is dominated by hospital representatives and serves to channel money into the nation's hospitals. Physicians control Blue Shield and are its principal beneficiaries. And commercial insurance companies are closely linked to banks and industrial corporations through the country's large financial empires. Some effects of this elite control over the health insurance industry have been inadequate and distorted insurance coverage, discrimination against the elderly, the sick, and the poor, and rapidly rising medical costs. In addition, the control of Medicare and Medicaid by private insurance institutions has contributed to the enormous inflation produced by these programs. Though governments, consumers, and even the insurance industry itself are beginning to apply controls to the unprecedented medical inflation of the late 1960s, these controls tend to limit access to health care, especially for low-income people. Unless insurance companies are barred from the health care field and a public financing mechanism based on progressive taxation is introduced, health care will never be an equal right for everyone in the United States.

Contracting Out in the Transit Industry

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-235
Author(s):  
Suzanne Leland ◽  
Olga V. Smirnova
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cost Savings ◽  
The United States ◽  
Contracting Out ◽  
Government Accounting ◽  
Provision Of Services ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
The Government ◽  
Enhance Efficiency ◽  
Transit Agencies

Since the Government Accounting Office report “Transit Agencies' Use of Contracting to Provide Service,” there is a growing interest in contracting out and any measures increasing efficiency and cost-savings. This chapter looks at the results of a unique national survey of transit agency managers conducted in 2017 for a modern snapshot of the transit industry in the United States. While there are specific factors that make transit contracting easier (e.g., competition in the provision of services), there are also factors that require contracting out but make monitoring of contracts more difficult (e.g., no capacity to provide services and monitoring in-house). The authors discuss these factors and provide illustrative examples of factors that may enhance efficiency.

scholarly journals Delivering Public Health Insurance Through Private Plan Choice in the United States

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 3-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gruber
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
United States ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Private Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Health Insurance ◽  
Market Failures ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Government

The United States has seen a sea change in the way that publicly financed health insurance coverage is provided to low-income, elderly, and disabled enrollees. When programs such as Medicare and Medicaid were introduced in the 1960s, the government directly reimbursed medical providers for the care that they provided, through a classic “single payer system.” Since the mid-1980s, however, there has been an evolution towards a model where the government subsidizes enrollees who choose among privately provided insurance options. In the United States, privatized delivery of public health insurance appears to be here to stay, with debates now focused on how much to expand its reach. Yet such privatized delivery raises a variety of thorny issues. Will choice among private insurance options lead to adverse selection and market failures in privatized insurance markets? Can individuals choose appropriately over a wide range of expensive and confusing plan options? Will a privatized approach deliver the promised increases in delivery efficiency claimed by advocates? What policy mechanisms have been used, or might be used, to address these issues? A growing literature in health economics has begun to make headway on these questions. In this essay, I discuss that literature and the lessons for both economics more generally and health care policymakers more specifically.

How the Law on Health Care Reform Was Being Adopted in USA

2011 ◽  
pp. 35-47
Author(s):  
F. Burdzhalov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Health Care Reform ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Aspects ◽  
American Health Care ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Government

The article develops the theme of American health care reform (the beginning see in: F. Burzhalov, Health Care Reform in the United States (Socio-Economic Aspects). “MEMO Journal”, 2010, no. 10). The author examines institutional and procedural aspects of the adoption of the law on health care, in particular how its ideas and main points were formed and promoted, what difficulties the government encountered in doing so, what effort were undertaken to convince public opinion in the need to support the reform, etc.

Private Health Insurance

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Morone
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Health Insurance ◽  
Affordable Care Act ◽  
Private Health Insurance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Present Condition ◽  
American Health Care ◽  
The Affordable Care Act ◽  
Multiple Risk

This article explores the development, the present condition, and the likely future of private health insurance in the United States. It emphasizes the three kinds of fragmentation that mark American health care: scattered oversight, multiple risk pools, and inchoate government. I pay special attention to the health-care challenges we face, the persisting patterns of inequality, and the important but limited reforms introduced by the Affordable Care Act.

Cross-National Comparison of School Victimization Between Canada and the United States

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian J. Cohen ◽  
Christine Ateah ◽  
Joseph Ducette ◽  
Matthew Mahon ◽  
Alexander Tabori ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Comparison ◽  
School Victimization ◽  
Cross National

Verán ustedes las chozas más humildes. El discurso de pobreza en la diplomacia pública cardenista dirigida a Estados Unidos

2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-281
Author(s):  
Sylvia Dümmer Scheel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Public Diplomacy ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Government ◽  
Lazaro Cardenas ◽  
The New Deal

El artículo analiza la diplomacia pública del gobierno de Lázaro Cárdenas centrándose en su opción por publicitar la pobreza nacional en el extranjero, especialmente en Estados Unidos. Se plantea que se trató de una estrategia inédita, que accedió a poner en riesgo el “prestigio nacional” con el fin de justificar ante la opinión pública estadounidense la necesidad de implementar las reformas contenidas en el Plan Sexenal. Aprovechando la inusual empatía hacia los pobres en tiempos del New Deal, se construyó una imagen específica de pobreza que fuera higiénica y redimible. Ésta, sin embargo, no generó consenso entre los mexicanos. This article analyzes the public diplomacy of the government of Lázaro Cárdenas, focusing on the administration’s decision to publicize the nation’s poverty internationally, especially in the United States. This study suggests that this was an unprecedented strategy, putting “national prestige” at risk in order to explain the importance of implementing the reforms contained in the Six Year Plan, in the face of public opinion in the United States. Taking advantage of the increased empathy felt towards the poor during the New Deal, a specific image of hygienic and redeemable poverty was constructed. However, this strategy did not generate agreement among Mexicans.

Comparison and analysis of the fda approved orphane drugs registerand the vital and essential drugs list of the Russian Federation

2020 ◽  
pp. 4-16
Author(s):  
D.S. Yurochkin ◽  
◽  
A.A. Leshkevich ◽  
Z.M. Golant ◽  
I.A. NarkevichSaint ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Rare Diseases ◽  
Orphan Drugs ◽  
The United States ◽  
Orphan Diseases ◽  
Essential Drugs ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
Comparison And Analysis ◽  
The Government

The article presents the results of a comparison of the Orphan Drugs Register approved for use in the United States and the 2020 Vital and Essential Drugs List approved on October 12, 2019 by Order of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 2406-r. The comparison identified 305 international non-proprietary names relating to the main and/or auxiliary therapy for rare diseases. The analysis of the market of drugs included in the Vital and Essential Drugs List, which can be used to treat rare (orphan) diseases in Russia was conducted.

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