Tension, compression, and shear: directions, stresses, and outcomes of health care cost control

"Control" of health care costs is often portrayed as a struggle between external, "natural" forces pushing costs up and individuals, groups, and societies trying to resist the inevitable. This picture is false. Control includes strenuous efforts by some to raise costs, and by others to resist those increases, and/or to transfer costs to someone else. But all such forces originate in the purposes and interests of individuals and groups. Health care cost control is a struggle among conflicting interests over the priorities of a society, and claims of "inevitability" are simply part of the political rhetoric of that struggle. International experience supports certain conclusions. First, there is no basis for the claim that limits on expenditure growth must threaten the health of (some members of) a society. Second, there is a substantial variety of experience with cost control. Failure in the United States is often presented as evidence of the impossibility of control, but most other countries have succeeded. Finally, control requires the direct confrontation of interests, with substantial build-up of stress. Advocates of expansion are more successful if they can transform compressive forces into efforts to shift the burden onto someone else. Pressures from providers in every country for "privatization" and/or payment by users reflect this recognition of economic interest.     

The establishment of the presence and group classification of sperm in mixed stains by isoelectric focusing

The article deals with experimental data on design of the method used for detection of sperm, blood and vaginal secretions according to isoelectric points of acid phosphatases, differential diagnosis of ABO group antigens in "mixed" stains as well as detection of phenotype of red cell acid phosphatase by isoelectric focusing method.     

The metropolitan character of urbanization in Mexico, 1900-1988

The author analyzes trends in urbanization in Mexico during the twentieth century, with a focus on the impact of rapid industrialization since 1982. Sections are included on the interrelations among economic development, industrialization, and urbanization; stages, levels, and measures of urbanization; the development of the city system in Mexico; and stages in the growth of Mexico City. (SUMMARY IN ENG)