Welfare is a rather vague term whose meaning depends on ideology, values and
judgments. Material resources are just means to enhance people s well-being, but
growth of the Gross Domestic Production is still the standard measure of the
success of a society. Fortunately, recent advances in measuring social performance
include health, education and other social outcomes. Because what we measure
affects what we do it is hoped that social policies will change. The movement
Health in all policies ...
Welfare is a rather vague term whose meaning depends on ideology, values and
judgments. Material resources are just means to enhance people s well-being, but
growth of the Gross Domestic Production is still the standard measure of the
success of a society. Fortunately, recent advances in measuring social performance
include health, education and other social outcomes. Because what we measure
affects what we do it is hoped that social policies will change. The movement
Health in all policies and its associated Health Impact Assessment methodology
will contribute to it. The task consists of designing transversal policies that
consider health and other welfare goals, the short term and long-term implications
and intergenerational redistributions of resources. As long as marginal
productivity on health outside the healthcare system is higher than inside it,
efficiency needs cross-sectoral policies. And fairness needs them even more,
because in order to reduce social inequalities in health, a wide social and political
response is needed.
Unless we reduce the well-documented inefficiencies in our current health care
systems the welfare states will fail to consolidate and the overall economic wellbeing
could be in serious trouble. In this article we sketched some policy solutions
such as pricing according to net benefits of innovation and public encouragement
of radical innovation besides the small type incremental and market-led
innovation. We proposed an independent agency, the National Institute for
Welfare Enhancement to guarantee long term fair and efficient social policies in
which health plays a central role.
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