Health economics in Spain: two recent interesting articles

Health Economics (2016)

Editorial written by David Cantanero Associate professor at the Department of Economics, University of Cantabria and Juan Oliva Associate professor at the Department of Economics University of Castilla la Mancha

The editorial puts the focus around the eight categories described by Alan Williams in the 1987-plumbing diagram (determinants of health; measurement and valuation of health; economic evaluation of treatment; demand for insurance and healthcare; supply of healthcare; market equilibrium and rationing; system evaluation; planning, budgeting and monitoring).

They put some Spanish papers as an example of how health economics is a powerful tool to evaluate public programs and policies.



Health Care System in Spain (2016)

Written by Guillem López-Casasnovas Professor at the Department of Economics of the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona and Beatriz González López-Valcarcel Professor at the Department of Economics of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria

The article overviews the Spanish healthcare system and its idiosyncratic interconnected sources of problems including, a deficit of good governance, inadequate incentives for agents to take proper responsibility, and a lack of a consensus model for articulating the public and private sectors. In this paper the authors propose some antidotes in order to improve the future prospects of the system: to combine governance with autonomy, to change copayments and to modify the institutional architecture in making coverage decisions, by creating an independent agency, along the line of NICE in England. This latter country as well as the Netherlands provides reform lessons from which the Spanish system may learn.

photo: bansky
______________________________________________________________________

Three Dialogues in: Ethics applied to companies and organizations

The Fundació Factor Huma in collaboration with the Obra Social "la Caixa", organized three workshops related to Ethics applied to companies and organizations.

The purpose was to create a common ethical reflection shared between the academic and business worlds. The 3 workshops where about:

• Ethics and Governance
• Ethics and Management
• Ethics and People

The workshop was conducted by the expert Begoña Roman, who in every session focused the topic to be deliberate.

• Begoña Román Maestre holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Barcelona. Between 1996 and 2007 she headed the Department of Ethics at University Ramon Llull (Barcelona) and she is currently professor in the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Barcelona. In addition, she is Chairperson of the Ethics Committee of Catalonian Social Services and member of Bioethics Committee of Catalonia. Her area of specialization is Bioethics and Ethics applied to professional and organizational environments.

Access to sessions: Diàlegs

You will find the videos of each session with the Begoña Roman speeches and access to document with an abstract of the key note speech and the conclusion of the workshop.

photo: (*) Photosolde
______________________________________________________________________