Int J Health Serv
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A corporate health ethic, forged in U. S. industry in the 20th century, clearly demarcated boundaries between private and workplace health concerns. This article advances evidence that the boundary is blurring, and argues that trends in workplace initiatives, including employee assistance, wellness programs, and drug screening, are giving shape to a new corporate health ethic. ⋯ Economic arguments such as "health care cost containment" are commonly offered as explanations for these new health initiatives. But the authors see the new ethic as a deeper response to a changing corporate environment and, more fundamentally, as emblematic of changes in the social control of work and productivity. They argue that the new health ethic may be a harbinger of new forms of social control in the workplace.
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Having achieved equality of access to health care, Canadian policymakers are setting new policy goals, within resource constraints, primarily to achieve equity of access to health. Across the country, provincial royal commissions have explored a number of policy options to achieve this goal. These options are reviewed and critically analyzed within the context of such challenges in health policy as insufficient access to high-technology care and the limits of medical care, and such external challenges as economic and demographic trends, federal-provincial disputes, and ideological beliefs. ⋯ Based on the provincial reviews, the authors conclude that Canada wants to achieve equitable access to health. With the shift of health policy away from the formerly protected arena of medical care, achieving equitable access to health will require both an alteration of priorities and values and considerable political will. Canada will be forced to meet these new challenges to maintain current achievements and to make its system even more successful.
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The setting of national health goals and targets in New Zealand has taken place in the context of fiscal crisis. The mandate for State intervention for social goals has also been under a sustained ideological challenge. These circumstances, together with other developments within the New Zealand health service, prepared the way for the development of the first set of health goals and targets. ⋯ A matrix of policy options is presented for resource allocation and public health. The case study described represents one solution to the set of policy choices presented by fiscal and ideological challenge; the "new managerialism" has been allied with the "new public health." The authors argue that a combination of ideological renewal and fiscal probity has preserved a vigorous role for the State in health and health care. This matrix of policy options also underlines the necessity to consider health outcomes, as well as organizational goals, in the evaluation of the performance of health systems.