International journal of health policy and management
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Int J Health Policy Manag · Apr 2015
The changing National Health Service: market-based reform and morality: Comment on "Morality and Markets in the NHS".
This commentary explores some of the issues raised by Gilbert et al. short communication, Morality and Markets in the NHS. The increasing role of market mechanisms and the changing types of healthcare providers together with the use of choice and competition to drive improvements in quality in the National Health Service (NHS), all have important ethical implications. In order for the NHS to continue providing the level of service quality that out performs many high-income countries, despite spending much less on healthcare, we need a re-think of creeping marketization and privatisation and a consolidation of the NHS as a publically owned resource run for the benefit of patients and the public, not commercial interests.
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Int J Health Policy Manag · Feb 2015
Quaternary prevention, an answer of family doctors to overmedicalization.
In response to the questioning of Health Policy and Management (HPAM) by colleagues on the role of rank and file family physicians in the same journal, the author, a family physician in Belgium, is trying to highlight the complexity and depth of the work of his colleagues and their contribution to the understanding of the organization and economy of healthcare. It addresses, in particular, the management of health elements throughout the ongoing relationship of the family doctor with his/her patients. It shows how the three dimensions of prevention, clearly included in the daily work, are complemented with the fourth dimension, quaternary prevention or prevention of medicine itself, whose understanding could help to control the economic and human costs of healthcare.
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Int J Health Policy Manag · Dec 2014
On the cost of shame : Comment on "Nudging by shaming, shaming by nudging".
In his editorial, Nir Eyal argues that a nudge can exploit our propensity to feel shame in order to steer us toward certain choices. We object that shame is a cost and therefore cannot figure in the apparatus of a nudge.
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Int J Health Policy Manag · Nov 2014
Knowledge, moral claims and the exercise of power in global health.
A number of individuals and organizations have considerable influence over the selection of global health priorities and strategies. For some that influence derives from control over financial resources. ⋯ In contrast to financial power, we commonly take for granted that epistemic and normative forms of power are legitimate. I argue that we should not; rather we should investigate the origins of these forms of power, and consider under what circumstances they are justly derived.