Health care in Canada: patterns of funding and regulation

During the 1970s the share of health care expenditure in Canadian GNP remained roughly stable, in the range of 7-71/2 percent of GNP, in marked contrast to its escalation in most other countries (the U.S. in particular) and to previous Canadian experience. The shift to a stable pattern coincided with the completion of the Canadian system of universal comprehensive public hospital and medical care insurance. This paper explores how and why the public insurance system served to contain cost escalation. It then discusses the inadequacy of expenditure experience per se as a basis for health system evaluation--the same data will support claims of both "underfunding" and "spiralling costs." More serious questions involve the influence of alternative patterns of health care funding and delivery on the effectiveness and efficiency of care provision, and the resulting distributional patterns of care and income. A brief sketch is given of the present situation and future possibilities of Canadian health care under these heads.     

Refining the definition of death for Australian legislation

In the article Mr. Smith considers the need for reform in the area of defining when death occurs and the various approaches that exist to define death. He then analyses the stages of the developments in the various Australian jurisdictions and discusses the substantive content of the basic definition adopted and the practical implications of any enactment. The author suggests that the concept of death should be legislatively enacted in relevant pieces of legislation which call for a resolution of the question at the present time and a more general separate statement defining death should be avoided at the moment. Conceptually death should be defined as the permanent and irreversible loss of consciousness of the individual as determined by irreversible cessation of the brain stem function. The actual operational criteria of death should form the subject of a circular published by the relevant statutory health authority for the guidance of medical practitioners in relation to the specific problems they face.     

Two Decades of Change: A Ranking of Key Issues Affecting Intergovernmental Relations

This article describes the results of a 1981 survey of 1,000randomly selected scholars of American government and politicswho were asked to rank the most significant intergovernmentalevents and trends of the past twenty years. Responses were receivedfrom almost 40 percent of these scholars; no significant returnbiases were detected. These scholars ranked civil rights andvoting rights acts as the most significant events of these decades.General Revenue Sharing and the reapportionment cases were rankedsecond and third in importance. The increased flow of federaldollars to states and local governments was ranked the mostimportant trend affecting intergovernmental relations, followedby the increased public disaffection with government and thegrowing dependence of local governments on state and federalaid. The Vietnam War and the inflationary spiral it initiatedwas ranked as the most significant social event affecting thecourse of intergovernmental relations, followed closely by theenergy crisis and the beginnings of the "Great Society." Thearticle also examines the effects of party identification, age,year of degree, government experience, region, and city sizeon scholarly attitudes toward these events and trends. Whilethe overall rankings were not dramatically altered, partisanship,region, and city size all were factors found to be noticeablyrelated to scholarly rankings of these important events andtrends.     

The Impact of Electoral Reform: "Open Elections" and the Louisiana Party System

This article examines effects of the "open-elections" law passedby the Louisiana legislature in 1975. The law eliminated traditionalclosed party primaries, creating instead, an open-electionssystem that requires all candidates, regardless of party affiliation,to appear on the same ballot. By and large, the new system hasnot had a significant effect on party competition, party success,or voter turnout in Louisiana.