Health is the basis of human happiness and a precondition for economic activity. A good and accessible healthcare system is therefore both a human and an economic necessity. The quality and accessibility of Belgium’s healthcare are increasingly under budgetary strain. Medical, technological and demographic evolutions require reforms to maintain a healthy healthcare in the future.
The Itinera Institute offers interested readers a selection of recent and topical publications and presentations from external sources, with a relevant angle towards the Institute’s key issues for Belgium. The selection is updated regularly and readers have the opportunity to stay on track through RSS for each issue. The selection in no way reflects a policy preference on behalf of the institute and is done for information purposes only.
Suggestions for publications or presentations are welcome and can be sent to info@itinerainstitute.org
Debating thresholds in assessing health technology
21 November 2008
| To prioritize spending of taxpayers’ money on healthcare, one way is known as Health Technology Assessment (HTA). To evaluate treatments in terms of their utility, HTA institutions have measured the benefits of a treatment as the period by which one’s life is extended and improved. This may sound (too?) scientific but does not exclude making a choice on an economic threshold of a given medicine, according to this Stockholm Network paper. There is a lot of room for improving today’s threshold concept before it can actually be used, the authors argue. Thresholds would need to be made more explicit and transparent, while taking into consideration the quality of evidence for instance. |
Stimulating the profession of general practitioner (GP)
10 November 2008
| The profession of GP could become a bottleneck profession. Given the estimated growth in demand for healthcare in the future this is bad news. So what factors influence attraction, recruitment and professional loyalty of GPs in Belgium then? This is the key question in this report from the Belgian Health Care Knowledge Centre. Recommendations towards the medical faculties, the working conditions and the job’s financial aspects are also made, since these appear to be decisive for GPs (to be) in the exercise of their profession. |
Obama vs. McCain: Competing Health Care Visions
13 October 2008
| In this paper, the Council for Affordable Health Insurance gives its views on the U.S. presidential candidates’ health care policies. What to do with the uninsured and how could access be improved? What do senators McCain and Obama think of transparency and price control? What are the other areas of reform? You’ll find everything about it in this short but comprehensive paper. |
Welcome to the health economy!
06 October 2008
| We are spending an increasing amount of our budget on health care. Private as well as public health expenses are growing spectacularly: 5% on average every year over the past 25 years! What’s to blame? In fact, the main suspects are our own preferences: the richer we get the more we are willing to spend on healthcare. This NBER paper found an income elasticity for health services of 1.6, meaning that income expenditures on health care in the U.S. are likely to reach 29 percent of the GDP by 2040! This confirms earlier findings of the Belgian Plan Bureau. Welcome to the health economy! |
What a glass of wine can do (to one’s health)
22 September 2008
| To evaluate one’s health, insurance companies might need to ask what one’s daily consumption of wine is. Studies have indeed shown that wine consumption and health are closely correlated. The question however remains in what direction causality goes: is wine drinking healthy or are healthy people drinking more wine? Because wine consumption is associated to a balanced and comfortable lifestyle, the latter seems more accurate: the circumstances in which one grows lives and works determine one’s health and the possibilities to fight illness and disability. So not wine, but social position create health inequalities. This World Health Organisation report scrutinizes what can be done to promote health equity in different countries, including Belgium, and suggests three principles of action to closing the gap in one generation. |
