Int J Health Serv
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Cigarette excise taxes are an important tool in the World Health Organization Framework Convention on Tobacco Control strategy for reducing global tobacco consumption. However, contemporary tobacco control efforts also coincide with the proliferation of neoliberal economic programs calling for the withdrawal of state activity from the economy to facilitate trade. ⋯ This article reviews collaboration between progressive organizations in the United States and the tobacco industry in the 1980s and 1990s, documenting potential sources of unanticipated resistance to excise taxes and highlighting the tobacco industry's capacity to engage in policy issues through third-party surrogates. It is important for those implementing cigarette excise tax increases to distance tobacco control objectives from larger economic policy measures and for tobacco control advocates to build alliances with organizations working for economic fairness in order to address mutual concerns.
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Historical Article
Beyond the Biomedical Paradigm: The Formation and Development of Indigenous Community-Controlled Health Organizations in Australia.
This article describes the formation and development of Aboriginal Community-Controlled Health Services in Australia, with emphasis on the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service in Sydney. These organizations were established in the 1970s by Indigenous Australians who were excluded from and denied access to mainstream health services. The aim of this research was to explore notions of Indigenous agency against a historical backdrop of dispossession, colonialism, and racism. ⋯ This study examined their philosophy of healthcare, the range of services provided, their problems with state bureaucracies and government funding bodies, and the imposition of managerialist techniques and strategies on their governance. Essentially, these organizations transcend individualistic, biomedical, and bureaucratic paradigms of health services by conceptualizing and responding to Indigenous health needs at a grassroots level and in a broad social and political context. They are based on a social model of health.
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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted in 2010 as the signature domestic achievement of the Obama presidency. It was intended to contain costs and achieve near-universal access to affordable health care of improved quality. Now, five years later, it is time to assess its track record. ⋯ More fundamental reform will be needed. The country still needs to confront the challenge that our for-profit health insurance industry, together with enormous bureaucratic waste and widespread investor ownership throughout our market-based system, are themselves barriers to health care reform. Here we consider the lessons we can take away from the ACA's first five years and lay out the economic, social/political, and moral arguments for replacing it with single-payer national health insurance.
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Personal health budgets in England are National Health Service (NHS) funds that can be allocated to certain groups of patients to allow them, together with their NHS support staff, to purchase services or equipment that they believe will enhance their health and well-being. Some see this as a welcome personalization of health care that increases people's control over their health. ⋯ K. government. This article describes the research and policy context in which this controversial intervention is being introduced and presents recent expert debate between proponents and opponents of personal health budgets, from e-mail discussion lists.