The conditions for state action in Florida's health-care market.

Despite the lack of confidence in government agencies to operate a nationalized health-care system in the United States, government agencies have significantly influenced the distribution and financing of health-care services in the market. Using the State of Florida as a case study, we examine the conditions under which a state health-care agency can consistently influence health-care market arrangements. We examined records from Florida's legislative sessions between 1965 and 1993 focusing on 27 legislative initiatives to involve the state's health-care agencies in the health-care services market.

From health services to medical markets: the commodity transformation of medical production and the nonprofit sector.

In recent years the language and logic of medical care have moved from providing medical services to marketing product lines. Analysis in this article examines this task transformation and its implications for transformation of the nonprofit sector and of the state. The authors argue that these transformations are essential explanatory elements to account for the origins of medical services in the nonprofit sector, the early exclusion of capitalist organizations from hospital care, and the changes that fostered corporate entry.

Rural community and physician perspectives on resource factors affecting physician retention.

This study was undertaken to investigate issues affecting recruitment and retention of physicians in a rural north Florida community. As part of this investigation, the authors examined the relevant context of medical care and physician practice for this community. The results identify a number of problems not uncommon in rural communities and supported by previous literature.

Covering the costs of care in neonatal intensive care units.

The continued rise of health care costs, despite private and governmental control efforts, has sustained cost containment as a central issue for health care researchers and policy makers. In keeping with these concerns, the Florida Health Care Cost Containment Board conducted a study of neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) in Florida to ascertain the costs, charges, and net revenues associated with NICU services in individual hospitals, to document cost shifting and cross-subsidization as a means of financing NICU care for indigent populations, and to assess the fiscal impact of NICUs in state-sponsored vs non-state-sponsored Regional Perinatal Intensive Care Center hospitals providing NICU care. Hospitals in the state-sponsored program reported a loss of approximately $16.