Professor Naoki Ikegami’s “Fee-for-service payment – an evil practice that must be stamped out” summarizes many of the failings of alternatives to fee-for-service (FFS) payment systems. His article also offers several suggestions for improving FFS systems. However, even powerful arguments against many of the alternatives to FFS, does not make a convincing argument for FFS systems. In addition, ...

Using data from the IMF Coordinated Portfolio Investment Surveys conducted in 2001, we analyze the determinants of 31 countries’ international equity holdings. We show that investors in all countries underweight U.S. equities in their portfolios, many by more than they underweight foreign equities in general. Such behavior is surprising given the common perception of the United States as a desi...

This article reports the findings of a study developed to compare health care costs in the United States with those of eight other industrially advanced countries over the period 1960-76. All of the countries studied were found to share with the United States the problem of increased health care spending that has outpaced inflation in other sectors of the economy and continues to consume a grow...

ensuring the security in civil aviation - as a primary factor in economical and industrial development - is the major concern of international community. pursuant to the serious challenges in this sector after terrorist events of 11 september 2001 in the united states, international civil aviation organization (icao) as the most important organization relating to the international civil aviatio...

although some alternative therapies like botanical and herbal therapies have shown promise for relieving menopause symptoms such as hot flashes, more research is needed. eighty-five percent of the women in the united states experience hot flashes of some kind as they approach menopause and for the first year or two after their periods stop. between 20 and 50% of women continue to have them for ...

This current study aimed at investigating the effects of gender (male versus female) and age (younger versus older) on consumer ethnocentrism and animosity in Indonesia in regard to eight opposed countries. Based on the ANOVA test, the findings showed that female and young consumers have a higher political and economical animosity; while female and old consumers tend to have higher ethnocent...

Healthcare reform and rationing have become almost household words in many Western countries, including Israel. The public, health professionals, and political leaders are united in the belief that a serious problem exists in providing comprehensive healthcare to the entire population at an affordable and politically acceptable price. It is important to preserve our sense of proportion. Most of...

national health information network (nhin) is a network in which all health care organizations, government agencies and other health-related organizations are connected to each other to exchange information about health. due to the necessity of a framework for nhin development, in this paper, according to the literature review, a definition for nhin framework was provided, and then the nhin rel...