The Affordable Care Act and the Transformation of US Health Care

The neoliberal period was accompanied by a momentous transformation within the US health care system.  As the result of a number of political and historical dynamics, the healthcare law signed by President Barack Obama in 2010 ‑the Affordable Care Act (ACA)‑ drew less on universal models from abroad than it did on earlier conservative healthcare reform proposals. This was in part the result of the influence of powerful corporate healthcare interests. While the ACA expands healthcare coverage, it does so incompletely and unevenly, with persistent uninsurance and disparities in access based on insurance status. Additionally, the law accommodates an overall shift towards a consumerist model of care characterized by high cost sharing at time of use. Finally, the law encourages the further consolidation of the healthcare sector, for instance into units named “Accountable Care Organizations” that closely resemble the health maintenance organizations favored by managed care advocates. The overall effect has been to maintain a fragmented system that is neither equitable nor efficient. A single payer universal system would, in contrast, help transform healthcare into a social right.

Analysis of the footprint in school age of 8-10 years old

Biomechanical problems in children, is an important subject currently, existing controversy in different areas, for example, the majority of children have a flattened footprint, or the hypermobility joint is linked to a musculoskeletal pain. The objective of the study was to determine what kind of footprint is most frequent in school-age children (8-10 years) in the area of Plasencia. This was taken as a sign 50 children, of whom 28 were males and 22 females. All the subjects in the study underwent an assessment of footprint planted in static as well as an exploration of different parameters through inspection in a standing position (formula digital, rearfoot). The results show that excavated footprint is present in a 72% cases of the population, 16% was belonging to an excavated footprint in which we find a higher percentage of weight related.For the digital formula we find that the most common is the Egyptian foot by 40% of the cases and that the prevalence in the rearfoot, is a normal hindfoot. In relation with the hypermobility joint, we check that it is more common in girls and that none of them presents an association to musculoskeletal pain. As a future line we could establish a more comprehensive study with new techniques and valuingchild’s statics and dynamics, to have a more accurate study of the different variables in the sample population studied.

The Cuban school as a context for a proper development of the environmental perception

Environmental Psychology in Cuba is a new discipline that promotes a historical and cultural vision of mankind. Perception is one of the distinct processes that creates environmental consciousness. Depending on the perception of the environment, individuals interact with it, and vice versa. It means that a good perception of the significant elements of the environment also contributes to the formation of an environmental consciousness, in which perception is one of the main processes. In this transformation the school is one of the most important places for creating knowledge, skills, habits, and good attitudes towards the environment. As a result, the evaluation of the environmental perception development in students allows detecting weaknesses in the environmental education and proposing solutions based on specific problems. This study is based on different researches where the subjects were Cuban students from different educational levels and provides a first approach to the dynamic of the environmental perception development in these individuals. Recent researches have used some dimensions of the environment concept as development indicators: material, relational, intrapersonal, behavioural, cognitive, natural or ecological, and cultural. Generally speaking, different investigations show that school is the right context for environmental education.