Adjusting the 5C pentagon for better health policymaking: observing the leading behavioural risks factors (diet, smoking, and alcohol consumption)

Smoking, alcohol consumption, and dietary risks pertain to the goods that can destabilise the market should their production trigger too many negative externalities and not enough research to counterbalance them. Moreover, all three are among the factors that, connected to ever-present risky behaviours, drive the most death and disability combined (the other two risk factors being the metabolic ones and the environmental/occupational risks). Therefore, they are to be considered as relevant to both the perceived health of the population and analysed in relation to the data on smokers, alcohol consumers, and poor diet impact. However, the design of these health policies must be adapted to the pattern of national culture of Romania, increasing the degree of their acceptance by the population. This is particularly true when less-damage alternatives are present in the market. Policymakers should incentivize their use over more-damaging products. In fact, the existence of better alternatives deepens the market failure that a sub-optimal allocation of resources produces when consumers opt for more damaging products over better goods. Clearly, the objective of policymakers ought to be to differentiate based on the risk profile of the products present on the market

Assessing the regional development degree – step one: Calibrating the polar diagram

The issue of regional development is widely debated, regulated and analyzed in official EU documents, as well as in specialized literature. The theme of the research is extensive and it includes the analysis of economic, legal and administrative dimensions that contribute to the development of a strong interdisciplinary research. The traditional objective of regional development policies is to reduce regional disparities, intra and interregional, achieving a relative balance between economic and social development levels of various areas of a national territory. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to develop management tools capable of providing an objective scientific analysis developing reliable data to contribute to the shaping in an essential manner the main directions of regional development. The article is the first part of the “Polar diagram – Tool for periodic assessment of the degree of regional development” and it aims to achieve a brief description of regional development areas that are the subject of analysis of the project, as well as highlighting the main indicators that will be used in the research, in order to contribute to the development of a regional polar diagram

The Healthcare Public System – Does Standardization Withhold the Bucket from Leaking?

The public healthcare system is heavily influenced by the 3C trilemma - cost - coverage - choice. The paper’s argument tackles the fact that should the public decision on improving capacity be leaning towards universal coverage in would result in efficiency losses and, in an attempt to control the costs it would limit patients’ choice. Should priority be given to performance or value? The present paper deals with the compromise between the equity and efficiency, a leaky bucket that becomes more visible in the struggle to build capacity and intervene in the market by setting standards. Setting healthcare standards is a global concern, the 3rd Sustainable Development Goal is a clear proof of that the aim to emphasise and better analyse two of the most influential variables: efficiency and equity. All in all, what we argue is that the current leaky bucket is a trade-off between choice, coverage, and cost. For a complex public service like healthcare, targeting a full coverage and multiple choice would incur huge costs and, cutting costs considerably restricts both the choice and coverage. The cost is influenced by the production capacity use when the activity has large fixed costs

The prerequisites of social development when planning for decentralization

The issue of decentralization is widely debated, regulated and analyzed in official EU documents and literature. The research topic is extensive and includes the analysis of the economic dimension, legal and administrative dimensions that contribute to the development of an interdisciplinary research. The paper is part of a larger research project aiming to design a polar diagram for the periodical assessment of the degree of regional development and, in its first phase, it has already established and defined the areas and their specific indicators (i.e. Social Development and Economy & Market, Environmental protection, Governance and Regulation, Spatial Planning, Education and Training, Science and Research). In the second phase we aim to determine whether the local government has the management, economic and administrative capacity to facilitate the implementation of decentralization policies in various areas of development and what are the results obtained after applying the decentralization measures. The impact of local and regional policies initiated in order to facilitate the implementation of the decentralization process, must be analyzed through a regular monitoring of the fluctuations recorded by a comprehensive range of regional indicators whose development depends on the success of the decentralization process. This paper therefore aims to conduct a comparative analysis regarding the evolution of the key indicators on sustainable development, public health, education and training at the level of the eight development regions in Romania, trying to determine to what extent the evolution or the involution of these indicators at the level of the local government, is the result of the legislative package on decentralization, the effectiveness of the administrative management, or it is only generated by their economic particularities