HPU

Government Health Care

Government Health Care Information on the latest developments in the provision of government health care.

Education and Healthcare: Don’t break the bits that ain’t broke!
Author: Eustace Davie Date: 10 January 2012

The saying, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it” is not one that can be applied to SA education and healthcare. Much of the state’s provision of healthcare and education is broken and government, with ...

Health Reform Law Will Not Help Contain Costs
Author: Source - C. PipesDate: 24 August 2011

The new U.S. health reform law won't help contain health costs, as the U.S. president so often claimed while lobbying for passage of his reform package. Instead, it will exacerbate them. Indeed, researchers estimate that ...

Government Intervention for Prescription Drugs Does Not Make Them Cheaper
Author: Source - Brett J. Skinner and Mark RovereDate: 16 August 2011

The prevailing assumption in Canadian drug policy is that without government intervention, the market will fail to achieve certain socially desirable outcomes, one of which is affordable access to prescription drugs, say Brett Skinner and ...

Safety-Net Providers after Health Care Reform: Lessons from Massachusetts
Author: Source - Leighton Ku et alDate: 16 August 2011

National health reform is designed to reduce the number of uninsured adults. Currently, many uninsured Americans receive care at safety-net health care providers such as community health centers (CHCs) or safety-net hospitals. This project examined ...

The case against President Obama's Health Care Reform
Author: Source - Robert A. LevyDate: 3 May 2011

Reinforced by decades of Supreme Court decisions that have gutted the Framers' original conception of limited government, the Obama administration has embraced an unprecedented expansion of centralised control. A new study by Robert A. Levy, ...

Medical tourism is growing
Author: Source - Manoj JainDate: 12 April 2011

According to Deloitte consulting services, 875,000 Americans were medical tourists in 2010, travelling outside U.S. borders to receive health care: dental work, elective hip replacements, even bypass surgery, says Manoj Jain, an adjunct assistant professor ...

Waiting Your Turn: Wait Times for Health Care in Canada 2010 Report
Author: Source - Bacchus Barua, Mark Rovere and Brett J. SkinnerDate: 22 December 2010

The Fraser Institute's 20th annual waiting list survey finds that province-wide wait times for surgical and other therapeutic treatments in Canada have increased in 2010:

<li> Specialist physicians surveyed across 12 special ties and 10 Canadian provinces ...

Delays in drug registration hamper access
Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 17 December 2010

In the SA market, Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) protection lasts for a maximum of 20 years but the registration process consumes a significant portion of the time period allowed to recoup costs due to the ...

Price controls reduce access to medicines
Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 8 December 2010

Dispensing fees, which stipulate the maximum price that pharmacists are allowed to charge for medicines, have been a bone of contention since the regulations were first proposed in January 2004, when the maximum price was ...

Patients Should Pay Their Own Bills
Author: Source - Investor's Business DailyDate: 3 December 2010

Blame for increases in health care costs should be placed on the system the government has promoted, says Investor's Business Daily (IBD).

  • The US tax code encourages employers to buy health care insurance plans with pre ...
  • Free the Fight Against Malaria
    Author: Source - Richard Nchabi KamwiDate: 25 November 2010

    Namibia is a party to the Stockholm Convention, which laudably seeks to remove harmful pollutants from the environment. As DDT is essential for malaria control, it is the only chemical classified as a "persistent organic ...

    American Health Care and American Productivity: An International Comparison
    Author: Source - John R. GrahamDate: 16 November 2010

    One of the great myths about American society is that our lack of a "universal" health plan harms our competitiveness, says John R. Graham, director of health care studies at the Pacific Research Institute and ...

    When the Doctor Has a Boss
    Author: Source Date: 16 November 2010

    The traditional model of doctors hanging up their own shingles is fading fast, as more go to work directly for hospitals that are building themselves into consolidated health care providers, says the Wall Street Journal.

    <li> ...

    Failure of the British National Health Service
    Author: Eustace DavieDate: 11 November 2010
    In her article NHS as State Failure: Lessons from the Reality of Nationalised Health Care, published in the December 2008 ...
    The Cost of "Free" Medical Care
    Author: Source - Matt KibbeDate: 11 November 2010

    One of the most difficult economic concepts to grasp is that we live in a world of limited resources. For better or for worse, scarcity forces us to choose from among our many wants, says ...

    News That's Too Good To Be True
    Author: Source - John C. GoodmanDate: 18 August 2010

    When President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) he wiped out $53 trillion of unfunded U.S. government liability. With the stroke of a pen, more than 60 per cent of Medicare's ...

    World Cup: South Africa 10 – Malaria 0
    Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 25 June 2010

    Soccer World Cup fans and other visitors to South Africa can relax.

    Although many perceive Africa as a place of wars and deadly diseases, thanks to great malaria ...

    Proposal to establish a state-run pharmaceutical manufacturer
    Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 25 May 2010

    A proposal to establish a state-run company to locally manufacture pharmaceuticals may, at first, sound appealing. After all, local production of pharmaceuticals would provide local jobs, increase expertise, cut dependence on foreign suppliers and reduce ...

    Obamacare’s hidden costs are rapidly surfacing
    Author: James Peron Date: 7 April 2010

    Gary Becker, Nobel laureate in economics, says that while America’s health system needs some reform, Obama's health-care legislation was “a bad bill.” Becker says it fails to address any of the real problems and merely ...

    Cuba’s doctor abuse
    Author: Source - Investor's Business Daily, February 25, 2010Date: 3 February 2010

    Remember Cuba's vaunted medical missionaries -- those who treated the poor abroad for nothing, supposedly out of selfless motives?  A lawsuit shows they were nothing but a communist slave racket.  It ought to bear a ...

    Life is about choices
    Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 15 January 2010

    The reality of life on our planet is that resources are limited but the wants of people virtually unlimited. Because we cannot have as much of everything as we would like, we are forced to ...

    An alternative approach to healthcare reform in SA
    Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 8 October 2009

    Recently the Department of Health suggested that the government would like to enact laws to introduce a National Health Insurance as early as April next year. An NHI-style system will completely alter SA’s healthcare industry ...

    Ownership – the key to improving public health care
    Author: Temba A NolutshunguDate: 22 September 2009

    Throughout South Africa there is a cry for improved public health care services. The government is proposing NHI to meet this demand. However, this need will not be fulfilled until it is recognised that the ...

    Close co-operation with the private sector could improve public healthcare delivery
    Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 4 September 2009

    In commenting on proposals for reforming US healthcare, satirist PJ O’ Rourke said, “If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free!” If that statement is true ...

    Providing high quality health-care to all South Africans
    Author: Johan BiermannDate: 9 January 2009
    Providing health care to the millions of poor South Africans is a major health-care challenge. But how big is this challenge? Because of the wide variations in available population and poverty statistics it is ...
    Britain’s health care system costs patients and business billions
    Author: Krystle Russin - Heartland InstituteDate: 3 July 2008

    Government-run health care in Great Britain has imposed huge costs on patients and businesses by denying treatments and medications, despite the fact that the National Health System (NHS) ran a $4.67 ...

    End failed healthcare policy in Africa
    Author: Thompson AyodeleDate: 14 February 2008

    After decades of neglect, the provision of effective healthcare is becoming one of the biggest concerns in Africa. Both foreign donors and African governments are ...

    High-priced Canadian Health Care System Fails Patients
    Author: Nadeem Esmail and Michael WalkerDate: 8 November 2007

    Canada spends more on health care than any industrialised nation except Iceland and Switzerland yet ranks near the bottom in terms of access to physicians and new medical technology, according ...

    Socialised Medicine Doesn't Work
    Author: Source - David GratzerDate: 21 August 2007
    Government researchers now note that more than 1.5 million Ontarians can't find family physicians. These problems are not unique to Canada – they characterise all government-run health care systems, says David ...
    Is it possible to eliminate malaria in South Africa?
    Author: Jasson UrbachDate: 22 June 2007

    At a meeting in Johannesburg in April, African Ministers of Health endorsed the African Union’s plan to eliminate malaria from the continent. Subsequently, at a malaria ...

    NEW PUBLICATION FROM FRASER INSTITUTE
    Author: VariousDate: 9 February 2007

    Government mismanagement of Social Insurance Numbers costing Canadians as much as $2.4 billion yearly 

    VANCOUVER, BC, ...

    Polio eradication is within our grasp
    Author: Source - Julie L. GerberdingDate: 22 January 2007

    The world is poised to add another disease to the list of those that will no longer threaten humans: polio, says U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director Julie Gerberding.

    So far, the world ...

    Shock report on drinking water in SA’s towns
    Author: Source - Tamar Khan Date: 22 January 2007

    (Bureaucrats not being bureaucratic with themselves)

    Half of the local water-service authorities in Mpumalanga believe they comply with government standards for drinking-water quality, but only a quarter of them actually monitor it, according to an unpublished ...

    Bismarck’s health plan
    Author: Source - EditorialDate: 18 January 2007

    Germany's health-care scheme, like the rest of its welfare system, dates back to the Iron Chancellor. Bismarck's original idea was to provide a safety net for the poorest of the poor. Now, 120 years later, ...

    Germany’s national health system is failing
    Author: Source - EditorialDate: 15 January 2007

    In 1993, when the Clintons were in the White House, Germany's health-care system was hailed as a model for how to remake the American way of providing insurance coverage. It consisted then, and still consists ...

    Germany's health care system plagued by disincentives
    Author: NCPA/Wall Street JournalDate: 20 December 2006

    Supporters of legislation to expand government health care coverage in the United States may want to take a closer look at Germany's ...

    A not-to-be-missed BEE opportunity in the public health sector
    Author: Temba NolutshunguDate: 10 November 2005

    The Health Sector Charter originally proposed by the Department of Health (DOH) failed to grasp the opportunity to empower the large number of employees in the public sector. If press reports are correct, this situation ...