Does it Matter Who Works at the Center? A Comparative Policy Analysis of Executive Styles

This article develops the concept of executive style to explore how variations in the relationships between politicians, career civil servants, and political appointees affect the types of policy outputs. A comparative analysis of home care policies in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia finds that the former’s civil service executive style – where professional civil servants work in close partnership with politicians in all phases of the policy process – led to the development of an innovative home care program with a long-term vision, whereas the latter’s politicized executive style – where politicians marginalize the role of civil servants in favor of political appointees – led to frequent changes in policy largely driven by short-term considerations.     

突发事件报道中的人文关怀浅探

人文关怀 ,是对人的生存环境、价值理念以及全面发展的关注与关怀。在新闻文化中 ,最能体现人文关怀色彩的新闻报道 ,当是对突发事件的报道与诠释。突发事件报道的日益增多 ,一方面反映了人作为社会主体意识的觉醒 ,另一方面也说明了新闻人注重对现实矛盾的关注与解剖 ,注重对生活中人的价值与权利的尊重与维护。     

LEGAL PROFESSIONALS AS TEACHERS OF FOSTER YOUTH: CHANGING EXPECTATIONS AND DEMANDING THE BEST

The foster care system sets low expectations for foster youth, and ultimately the system produces poor results in terms of outcomes. In its unique role, the legal system and its actors have the responsibility and opportunity to change expectations, mentor, and provide a frame work for successful reform using the skills inherent in the practice and study of the law. Importantly, foster youth must be supported and expected to achieve high educational outcomes through goals that are developed in partnership with service providers and professionals like attorneys.     

PRIVATIZATION OF CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES

Florida is a state in flux in terms of its child protective services organization. The Department of Children and Families has suffered numerous failures in protecting children in its care. Publicity surrounding these defects have led to major overhauls in the agency itself, as well as a concerted effort to move forward toward privatization of virtually all services currently administered by the department. Many of the initial attempts at privatization have already failed; others have had to be revamped to allow for unforseen problems. It is appallingly true that Florida, like any other state with serious issues in child protective services, has an absolute obligation to search for the "miracle cure" for its ailments. But only serious attention to the mistakes of the past and the will to correct them will allow Florida to finally put its children first in its citizens' hearts and minds, where they belong.     

Reimbursement schemes for hospitals, malpractice liability, and intrinsic motivation

We develop a simple multi-task principal-agent model to analyze the interplay between optimal reimbursement schemes for hospitals and liability rules (basic model). We then extend our model and assume that the hospital is intrinsically motivated to exert positive effort for quality and cost reduction. This effort, however, is biased towards quality. Moreover, the intrinsic motivation may be crowded out by monetary incentives. In such a setting, we find that a pure prospective payment system (PPS) that has become widespread in recent years can only be optimal in the unlikely case where malpractice liability holds hospitals fully responsible for expected harm. For other cases, we confirm the prejudice that PPS may lead to inefficiently low quality. Then, the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) system is superior if the intrinsic motivation is high and relatively little biased towards quality, whereas mixed systems should be chosen otherwise. Our model sheds light on why countries like the USA with a tough liability system haven been less reluctant to switch from FFS to PPS than Germany, for instance.     

我国新型农村合作医疗制度的特点、问题与对策

我国新型农村合作医疗制度在全面推进中存在的主要问题有：农民参合积极性不高;管理体制不健全;“新农合”基金筹资成本大,补偿标准不尽合理,补偿能力有限;医疗监管难度系数较大;立法滞后,政策不过硬;缺乏合理的人才机制;等等。今后,需要从几个方面着手规范与完善：加强管理机构和管理服务能力建设;扩大筹资渠道,建立长效机制;改善与外部的关系,形成良好的互动局面;尽快建立城乡一体的医疗保障制度和管理制度;强化新型农村合作医疗监管,提高管理效率;加快相关立法,确保新型农村医疗保障制度政策的稳定性;加强“新农合”人力资源建设,重视乡镇卫生院人才培养;等等。     

构建我国新型农村合作医疗保障制度研究

在市场经济条件下,我国农村正在建立新型合作医疗保障制度。在我国新型农村合作医疗保障制度实施中还存在有诸多体制性障碍。针对这些问题,从资金筹集,管理方式和保障水平三方面进行设计,是整个农村医疗保障体系的核心部分。对失地农民、贫困农民和农民工等农村弱势群体的医疗保障可采取不同的方式,若完善法规体系,提高立法层次,建立多层次的医疗保障制度,加大政府区域投入比例等,是农村弱势群体医疗保障模式的不同选择。