Health and welfare

The Life Account – toward a new nordic social security model

8 January, 2014

Increasingly countries around the world struggle to provide welfare and social security in a world where high unemployment, an aging population and increasing expectations erode public finances. Over the past decades some of the most accomplished economists in the world, such as Josef Stiglitz and Martin Feldstein have identified a method for combining a safety […] Read more...

Long waits at Emergency Departments unnecessary

27 December, 2013

Using simple methods, Emergency Department physician Jody Crane and his colleagues drastically reduced waiting times at Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg, Virginia USA. Now, the ideas Dr Crane and his team developed are being spread to the Swedish healthcare system. These ideas came out of a difficult situation in 2003 at Mary Washington Hospital when […] Read more...

Smart healthcare reform in one of the world’s poorest nations

4 June, 2013

Burundi is known as one of the world’s most poverty stricken nations in absolute terms – plagued by war, corruption, and disease. But still, the country can serve as a good example for a specific reform, at least in healthcare. There, the national healthcare system has implemented quality based reimbursements for care providers. The Burundian […] Read more...

Aid conditioned on reforms

25 March, 2013

Conditional aid was the idea behind the heavily criticised World Bank and IMF strategy that came under the designation ‘Washington Consensus’. The concept involved poor aid recipient countries were required to promise governmental reforms before they could receive aid. But, it didn’t work. Pressure to provide aid resulted in recipient countries getting the aid without […] Read more...

Bureaucracy blocks access to prestige university courses

13 March, 2013

The government’s efforts to improve quality in Swedish higher education are overshadowed by dramatic changes in access to prestigious courses from globally ranked universities. But, many Swedish students are still forced to refrain from these internationally respected courses, writes Stefan Fölster, Managing Director for the Reform Institute in Stockholm. The Swedish National Audit Office found […] Read more...