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Inflated drug prices necessarily raise the issue of rational allocation of health care resources. The system operated by the NICE agency in the UK attempts to do this by calculating the cost per quality-adjusted life year gained (QALY) and recommending funding only for drugs whose cost per QALY falls under a certain threshold. The whole process is documented in detail and easily accessible, and often results in significant discounts on drug prices. Given that some kind of rationing of health care is inevitable, the rational and transparent process followed by NICE has a number of positive features., (© 2017 médecine/sciences – Inserm.)

Settlement of medical malpractice claims was radically changed by the Kouchner Law that set up a rapid, effective system of indemnification. Victims can choose between conventional court proceedings and a non-judicial conciliation procedure. Choice between the two processes depends on the circumstances of the case.

The author reiterates that the transfer of public health policies to French Guyana has still not been able to fill in the gap related to delays in development of infrastructure and the lack of personnel in the social and medical establishments. The system of management for handicapped children in this French county is strongly influenced by the increasing immigrant population and by the vulnerability and instability of the administrative and socioeconomic situations of those families. Furthermore, the obstacles that the professionals from the socio-medical sector must confront in their daily practice and activities are described. An analysis of their portrayals and practices permit the author to show and outline their relationships with the immigrant families who are at risk, particularly that of maintaining and suffering from the general air of stigma to which they are objected to in the Guyanese society.

Since the following days of independences, the Senegalese army mission has mainly consisted in defending the national territory integrity and in ensuring the protection of the populations and their goods. In the public health system, thanks to the quality of its human resources the army intervenes specifically at every level of the health care structure. The mission assigned to the Senegalese army health unit is therefore multidimensional. In 2001, the operational budget of the army health services is estimated at 177 millions CFA F (265500 euros), its medical consumption at 212 millions CFA F (323 000 Euros) and its health expenditure at 385 millions CFA F (585 000 euros). The army supports the government health policies in different ways: on the one hand, availability of the ministry of health staff, on the other hand, the direct involvement in health care and the implementation of the national and international health programmes.

Primary Health Care (PHC) financing is today one of the major concern of public health system managers in developing countries. Their governments never allocated appropriate and sufficient resources to the sector of PHC. The external donors' funds are mostly allocated to short term PHC projects. They stop with the end of the projects. The undesirable consequences of that situation are well known. They are mainly related to a persistence of high rate of mortality and morbidity due to preventable diseases. To better address that situation the health ministers of the WHO african region adopted in September 1987 in Mali the Bamako alternative, to the country economical situation, for PHC services financing. It permitted to finance up to 80% of the recurrent costs of health system of Pikine department in 1980. In the three pilot districts where the Bamako initiative strategy has been tested: Podor, Matam and Bignona, all of the one hundred and two (102) health posts are self financed for their recurrent costs, since 1992.

Alberta initiated the Acute Care Funding Project (ACFP) in 1988, a new hospital funding system that institutes case mix budgeting adjustments to the global budget so that hospitals can be treated more equitably. The initiative is a significant departure in principle from the former method of funding. The ACFP is summarized and critiqued, and focuses on the inpatient side of the picture. The various elements of the project are discussed, such as the hospital performance index, the hospital performance measure, the Refined Diagnostic Related Group, case weights, typical and outlier cases, and the costing mechanisms. Since its implementation, the ACFP has undergone substantial changes; these are discussed, as well as some of the problems that still need to be addressed. Overall, the system offers incentives to reduce length of stay and to increase the efficiency with which inpatient care is provided.