In 2004, the rates charged to many uninsured and other "self-pay" patients for hospital services were often 2.5 times what most health insurers actually paid and more than three times the hospital's Medicare-allowable costs. The gaps between rates charged to self-pay patients and those charged to other payers are much wider than they were in the mid-1980s, and they make it increasingly more dif...

July 2005, Vol. 95, No. 7 SAMJ Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) is an important tool in HIV prevention efforts and in the identification of HIV-infected individuals for care and treatment services. But despite the central role of VCT in the response to HIV/AIDS, less than 20% of South Africans have been tested for HIV. Although there are substantial barriers to seeking VCT, including qua...

System reliability often depends on the effort of many individuals, making reliability a public good. It is well-known that purely voluntary provision of public goods may result in a free rider problem: individuals may tend to shirk, resulting in an inefficient level of the public good. How much effort each individual exerts will depend on his own benefits and costs, the efforts exerted by the ...

Africa is quickly becoming a destination for information technology in the form of tons of used computers, fax machines, cell phones, and other electronics. Although many of these machines can be repaired and resold, up to 75% of the electronics shipped to Africa is junk. This equipment, when dumped, may leach lead, mercury, and cadmium into the environment; when burned, it may release carcinog...

OBJECTIVES To describe the formation of the Youth Tobacco Cessation Collaborative (YTCC), a voluntary collaborative of leading funders of youth tobacco cessation research and services. METHODS The long-term goal and specific short-term (2-year) goals, strategies, and accomplishments are briefly described with reference to its guiding action plan: National Blueprint for Action: Youth and Young...

While a dairy cooperative provided the bylaws, managing a cooperative of rural hospitals has been a learn-as-you-go experience. This article presents the management principles that have been learned over the last 13 years. Its experience suggests that developing and managing partnerships requires behaviors different from those typically associated with the management of individual organizations.

By Surgeon-Major Herbert Greene, A.M.D. I shall in this paper confine myself to the consideration of diet in European Hospitals alone, for to treat exhaustively the very important and complex question of diet in Native Hospitals as well, would require lengthened space, and more special knowledge than I have at my disposal. I may be allowed, however, to remark enpassant that the ? latter subject...

towards his maintenance, and is asked to do so, nor the fact that a hospital patient can well afford to pay for treatment, and is expected to do so, vitiate the essentially voluntary character of the great bulk of the work in that hospital, which is certainly primarily intended for and mainly used by those who cannot afford to pay for such treatment. Any such payments are, of course, quite volu...