Alzheimer's Disease - Perspective from Political Science: Public Policy Issues.

The paper outlines the policy context and summarizes the numerous policy issues that AD raises from the more generic to the unique. It posits that strong public fears of AD and its future prevalence projections and costs, raise increasingly difficult policy dilemmas. After reviewing the costs in human lives and money and discussing the latest U.

Health Expenditure Growth under Single-Payer Systems: Comparing South Korea and Taiwan.

Objective: Achieving universal health coverage has been an important goal for many countries worldwide. However, the rapid growth of health expenditures has challenged all nations, both those with and without such universal coverage. Single-payer systems are considered more efficient for administrative affairs and may be more effective for containing costs than multipayer systems.

Medication supply, healthcare outcomes and healthcare expenses: longitudinal analyses of patients with type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

Introduction: Patients with chronic conditions largely depend on proper medications to maintain health. This study aims to examine, for patients with diabetes and hypertension, whether the appropriateness of the quantity of drug obtained is associated with favorable healthcare outcomes and lower expenses.

Methods: This study utilized a longitudinal design with a seven-year follow-up period from 2002 to 2009 under a universal health insurance program in Taiwan.

End-of-life decision making across cultures.

Even more so than in other areas of medicine, issues at the end of life elucidate the importance of religion and culture, as well as the role of the family and other social structures, in how these issues are framed. This article presents an overview of the variation in end-of-life treatment issues across 12 highly disparate countries. It finds that many assumptions held in the western bioethics literature are not easily transferred to other cultural settings.

The brain, aggression, and public policy.

Investigational, conceptual, and interventional advances in the neurosciences strain consensus in research ethics, clinical ethics, legal ethics, and jurisprudence and demand innovative adaptation in public policy. I review these advances, ask how they might change a range of policies, and conclude that their implications -- particularly relating to aggression -- are likely to have been underestimated.