Images of health insurance in popular film: the dissolving critique

Several recent films have villainized the health-insurance industry as a central element of their plots. This Article examines three of those films: Critical Care, The Rainmaker, and John Q. It analyzes these films through the context of the consumer backlash against managed care that began in the 1990s and shows how these films reflect the consumer sentiment regarding health-insurance companies and the cost controlling strategies they employ. In addition, the Article identifies three key premises about health insurance in the films that, although exaggerated and incomplete, have significant factual support. Ultimately, the author argues that, despite their passionately critical and liberal tone, these films actually put forward solutions that are highly individualist and conservative, rather than inclusive and systemic.     

A New Electorate? Comparing Preferences and Partisanship between Immigrants and Natives

As immigrants constitute a large and rising share of both the population and the electorate in many developed democracies, we examine aspects of immigrant political behavior, a vital issue that has gone largely unexplored outside of the U.S. context. We focus on Germany and Great Britain, two countries that provide good leverage to explore both within-country and cross-national variation in Europe. Our overall aim is to assess the impact of the immigration context. As a first step, we investigate whether immigrants and natives have systematically different attitudes on two issues that have dominated postwar European politics: social spending and redistribution. With controls in place, we observe that immigrants are no more likely to support increased social spending or redistributive measures than natives and find support for hypotheses highlighting selection effects and the impact of the immigration regime. Where we do find an opinion gap, immigrants tend to have more conservative preferences than natives. As a second step, we explore the determinants of immigrant partisan identification in Britain and find that the salience of the immigration context helps explain immigrants' partisan attachment to the Labour Party.     

Protracted Refugee Situations: Parallel Health Systems and Planning for the Integration of Services

The international community typically responds to refugee situationsby establishing ‘care and maintenance’ programmesspecifically for refugees. Limited resources may also be directedto hosting communities, but donors often channel the bulk offunding through UNHCR and its implementing partner NGOs, whoin turn create service delivery structures that are operatedin parallel to local structures. Although there may be causefor this approach in a short-term emergency phase, particularlyif the host country systems are very weak, this eventually becomesfinancially problematic if refugees continue to live in exilefor years at a time. In the short term, it can also engenderan inequitable and inefficient use of scarce resources. Thispaper traces the evolution and impact of implementing refugeehealth services in parallel to local systems using observationsfrom Uganda, and offers Quality Design as a model for planningthe local integration of services.     

Ecstasy (MDMA) deaths in New York City: a case series and review of the literature

MDMA ("ecstasy") has gained renewed popularity as a drug of abuse. To access the epidemiology and causes of death of MDMA-positive fatalities, all deaths investigated by the OCME that tested positive for MDMA (22 deaths) between January 1997 and June 2000 were reviewed. There were three deaths in each 1997 and 1998, eleven in 1999, and five in the first part of 2000. Of these 22 deaths, 13 were due to acute drug intoxications, 7 due to mechanical injury (blunt trauma, gunshot wounds), and 2 due to a combination of natural disease and acute drug intoxication. Evidence of recent opiate and/or cocaine use was found in 7 of the acute intoxication deaths and in none of the traumatic or combination natural/intoxication deaths. The race of all decedents was White between the ages of 17-41 years, and 18 of 22 were men.     

A consumer's perspective on domestic violence interventions

The current study takes a consumer perspective to examine the impact of legal and mental health systems on couples who are experiencing problems with domestic violence. Unfortunately, their thoughts and wishes are rarely considered when planning for change in their lives. The study asks couples what they think happens to cause abusive episodes, what happens to them when someone finds out about the abuse, and what their thoughts are about the interventions they receive. The specific interventions in this study were a pro-arrest policy and solution-focused brief therapy.