[Health at cost? Meeting of the FICOSSER Inter-Center Collaborative Research Group on Health Cost Containment...

The Catalunyan Health Service describes its innovating approach based on the conventional bedday average cost for allocating resources to hospital. The model developed at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, aims at reducing cost through quality improvement. The Center for Health Policy Research, University of Florida, USA, suggests a renovated DRG's model of reimbursement based on hospital outcomes. A typology of reimbursement to providers is designed by the National School of Public Health of Brazil. The health cost experience and the impact of co-payment policy in Korea is described by the Institute for Health Services Research of the University Yonsei in Seoul. The paper presented by the Australian National University, Canberra, tries to identify the factors contributing to curbing growth rate of health costs in Australia. Drug utilization in Poland is analyzed by the Department of Social Medicine of the Medical University of Lodz, Poland. The current reform of the Hungarian health system is described by the Department of Social Medicine of the Medical University of Debrecen, Hungary. The specific issues of a health system in a fast-growing economy, which however will be burdened by population aging in less than 3 decades, are analyzed by the Division of Health Care of the National University of Singapore. The Center for Health Policy Research of the American Medical Association displays economic calculations which show that, from the consumer's point of view, health costs are far from being too high. The Université de Bourgogne lays down the economic foundations for a containment policy based on professional ethics.