The growth in health care costs in the United States in the past two decades has been staggering and extraordinarily burdensome not only to the federal and state governments but also to employers and individuals who purchase their health insurance in the private market. In 2009, national health expenditures (“NHE”) in the United States grew by 4% to $2.5 trillion, or $8,086 per capita, and acco...

This paper examines prospects for compromise between competing perspectives on four key climate change issues: costs, level of domestic action, environmental integrity, and developing world involvement. It focuses on the policy issues stemming from the uncertainty about abatement costs. Based on extensive simulations of a model integration tool, SAP12 (Stochastic Assessment of Climate Policies,...

BACKGROUND The aim was to review the funding, organization, data handling, outcome measurements, and findings from existing national shoulder and elbow joint replacement registries; to consider the possibility of pooling data between registries; and to consider wether a pan european registry might be feasible. MATERIALS AND METHODS Web sites, annual reports, and publications from ongoing nati...

–The HIV epidemic in Kenya peaked in the late 1990s with an overall prevalence rate of over 14%. With various iniatives implented, currently the prevalence rate is estimated at 6.3 % in the age group 15-49 years. This notwithstanding, incidence remains high at 132,000 adults and 34,000 paediatric cases annualy. A total of I.5million cases of HIV have been reported to date. With improved diagnos...

“It was sad to see the empty bag Blown about like a dirty rag” A Summer Morning Walk By Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) Introduction: In March 2002, the Irish Government introduced a 15 Euro cent environmental levy on all shopping plastic bags, previously provided free of charge to consumers at points of sale. The motivation for such was primarily to reduce the consumption of plastic bags and the ...

BACKGROUND In the United States, a dedicated property tax describes the legal authority given to a local jurisdiction to levy and collect a tax for a specific purpose. We investigated for an association of locally dedicated property taxes to fund local public health agencies and improved health status in the eight states designated as the Mississippi Delta Region. METHODS We analyzed the diff...

OBJECTIVE To determine the major endocrine complications present in patients of Thalassemia major presenting to a tertiary care center in Karachi, Pakistan. METHODS Records of all thallasemia major patients at a Haematology Department in a tertiary care hospital of Karachi were retrospectively reviewed from May to August 2009 with specific focus on endocrine data and investigations. The patie...

Problem: The Dutch aquaculture industry is based on fish production in recirculating aquaculture systems. Enforced by legislation the fish farmers have to reduce the waste discharge and are not allowed to discharge farm effluents on the surface waters. The government expresses waste discharge in inhabitant equivalents (I.E = average daily waste production of 1 person during 1 year, expressed in...

BACKGROUND Schizophrenia is a serious mental illness that levies a heavy medical toll and cost burden throughout the world. Scientific collaborations are necessary for progress in psychiatric research. However, there have been few publications on scientific collaborations in schizophrenia. The aim of this study was to investigate the extent of author collaborations in schizophrenia research. ...

This paper studies discretionary charges, which I define to be fees and levies that are collected at the discretion of local officials, as firm output distortions. I document that there is an inverted-U relationship between size of firms and discretionary charges paid by firms in China. I build a simple political economy model that captures interactions between firms and local officials. These ...