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标题: Economist, Apr 6, 2013 [打印本页]

作者: choi 时间: 4-16-2013 08:18
标题: Economist, Apr 6, 2013
(1) French taxes | Another Absurdity; The latest wheeze for a 75% tax rate is even worse than the one it replaced.
http://www.economist.com/news/eu ... d-another-absurdity

作者: choi 时间: 4-16-2013 08:18
(2) Health care in America | Medicine at the Mall; New ways to make clinics more convenient.
http://www.economist.com/news/bu ... nient-medicine-mall

Quote:

"Walgreens, a national pharmacy chain, is expanding its clinics’ scope. Having long treated sore throats and pink eyes, on April 4th the company announced new services to manage chronic conditions.

"Retail clinics got a bumpy start, thanks to slim margins and erratic seasonal revenue (fewer coughs mean less money). But volume has grown. According to RAND, a think-tank, the number of visits to retail clinics grew fourfold between 2007 and 2009. This looks set to rise again, as clinics expand in number and in scope.

"The industry’s two leaders are CVS Caremark, a pharmacy with 640 clinics, and Walgreens, with 372.

Note:
(a) Walgreens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walgreens
(Walgreen Co., doing business as Walgreens, is the largest drug retailing chain in US; Headquarters Deerfield [to the north of Chicago], Illinois; Charles R Walgreen first opened a drug store at Chicago in 1901)
(b) Orlando, Florida
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando,_Florida
(City officials and local legend say the name Orlando originated from a soldier named Orlando Reeves who died in 1835 during a supposed attack by Native Americans in the area during the Second Seminole War)

* Italian surname Orlando has an earliear form Rolando.*
* The English surname Rowland is "from Rol(l)ant, a Norman personal name composed of the Germanic elements hrod ‘renown’ + land ‘land’, ‘territory.’"
* Rolando and Rowland share the same root.
* Roland
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland
(died 778; was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne)
(c) The article mentions "urgent-care centres" which is new to me. There is no need to read the rest of (i) and (iii) below, but do read (ii) which gives you an idea how an urgent care cneter is operated. By definitions, clinics at Walgreens and CVS are not urgent care centers. Please also note that an urgent care center is often located away from the hospital's main site (near a baseball field in (i) and at Waltham in (iii) while Newton-Wellesley hospital is located at Newton, Massachusetts). To distinguish from ambulatory care department (no appointment necessary in Massachusetts General Hosptial but operating at regular business hours), urgent care centers open early and close late and in weekends (but not 24/7).
(i) Bruce Japsen, A Boom In Urgent Care Centers As Entitlement Cuts Loom. Forbes, Mar 11, 2013 (blog).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruc ... itlement-cuts-loom/

two consecutive paragraphs:

"Urgent care, also known as immediate care, is similar to retail health clinics operated by Walgreen (WAG), CVS/Caremark (CVS), or Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) in that they are generally open in the evening and on weekends to treat routine maladies but also offer a board-certified physician and additional services such as on-site X-rays for broken bones.

"'We really should be thought of as an after-hours doctors’ office,” Dr. Michael Pitt, a staff pediatrician at Ann & Robert H Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago told Chicago Medicine magazine in an interview about the hospital’s nine-month old urgent care center just 11 blocks south of Wrigley Field on North Clark Street. 'At a (CVS) Minute Clinic, they see adults and kids, but the patient might not get a board certified pediatrician or doctor.'

(ii) Waltham Urgent Care Center. Newton-Wellesley Hospital, undated.
http://www.nwh.org/clinical-centers/waltham-urgent-care-center/
(iii) urgent care
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urgent_care
("Urgent care is the delivery of ambulatory care in a facility dedicated to the delivery of medical care outside of a hospital emergency department, usually on an unscheduled, walk-in basis. Urgent care centers are primarily used to treat patients who have an injury or illness that requires immediate care but is not serious enough to warrant a visit to an emergency department. Often urgent care centers are not open on a continuous basis, unlike a hospital emergency department which would be open at all times")

(d) Concentra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentra
(a national health care company founded in 1979; acquired by Humana in 2010)
(e) Humana
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humana
(founded in 1961; Headquarters Louisville, Kentucky)

作者: choi 时间: 4-16-2013 08:19

choi 发表于 4-16-2013 08:18
(2) Health care in America | Medicine at the Mall; New ways to make clinics more convenient.
http:// ...

(3) The Philippines | In Ratings Heaven; The archipelago has never been more creditworthy.
http://www.economist.com/news/fi ... rthy-ratings-heaven

Quote:

"Over 10m Filipinos, equivalent to about a quarter of the country’s labour force, live or work abroad, permanently or temporarily, legally or illegally, in over 200 countries. Their remittances are equivalent to 8.5% of GDP, helping the country to plug its trade deficit

"The public finances rest on narrow foundations: the government collected less than 13% of GDP in taxes last year, a paltry ratio that helps explain why public investment amounted to less than 3% of the economy.

Note: list of countries by tax revenue as percentage of GDP
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lis ... s_percentage_of_GDP
(Heritage Foundation 2012: China 17.0; Cuba 44.8; France 44.6; Germany 40.6; Hong Kong 13.0; India 17.7; Italy 42.6; Japan 28.3; Taiwan 12.4; UAE 1.4 [lowest]; UK 39.0; US (all level) 26.9; Zimbabwe 49.3 [highest])

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