Diagnostic Related Groups (drgs): Resourceful tools for financial crisis times?

This document is intended to be read by the Colombian Ministry of Social Protection (former MoH) and includes some recommendations that could be implemented on the aim to increase allocative efficiency, thus improving macroeconomic performance of the Colombian Health System (CHS). It will be conducted as follows: first it will briefly review the background and actual context of the CHS, after this, will mention some related issues that justify a policy intervention on strategic purchasing to promote long run sustainability and hopefully the future attainment of major goals such as universal coverage and quality improvement. After prioritizing the main financial threats to the system, based on findings from literature review from countries that have successfully implemented similar policies, this paper will make some policy recommendations on regards especially to inpatient health care services in Colombia.

Italian citizenship and the descendants of Italian citizens emigrated in Colombia. Removing a social injustice

Law is often the source of social discriminations, but, at the same time, it can be thekey to delete these social discriminations. The authors try to give an example of thisphenomenon, by analyzing the impact of the Italian citizenship’s rules over the descendantsof the Italian citizens emigrated abroad and, especially, in South America.Indeed, according to the former Italian law, only fathers could transmit iure sanguinisthe citizenship to their children: moreover, women automatically lost theItalian citizenship if they get a foreign citizenship by concluding a marriage witha foreign husband.These rules hardly discriminate the Italian women emigrated abroad and, especially,their descendants who were prevented to get the Italian’s citizenship.These discriminatory rules were finally deleted by the Italian Constitutional Courtin the Seventies and in the Eighties: however, the effects of those rules still persisted,since the decision of the Constitutional Court could not overcome the temporal limit of the entry into force of the Constitution (01.01.1948) and, therefore, could not“cover” the discriminatory facts occurred before that date.Finally in 2009, the Italian Supreme Court, by extending the effects ratione temporisof the decisions of the Constitutional Court, “reopened the doors” of the Italiancitizenship to a huge number of Italian citizenship born from Italian women beforethe 01.01.1948.Therefore, the authors focus on the social impact of this decision for all the potentialItalian citizens living in South America and try to assess its juridical effects overthe Italian law.

El derecho a la educación como derecho social fundamental en sus tres dimensiones: educación primaria, secundaria y superior

En este artículo, se plantea el problema de si puede considerarse a la educación como un derechofundamental. Se analizan las implicaciones que ha tenido su no inclusión como tal derechoen la Constitución en el capítulo de los derechos fundamentales. Se estudian dos grandes tradicionessobre los derechos fundamentales: el neoliberalismo afirma que los derechos fundamentalesson únicamente los derechos liberales civiles y políticos. Y el liberalismo social concibe quelos derechos fundamentales son, además de los derechos liberales civiles y políticos, los económicosy sociales. En la parte final, se hace una reconstrucción del desarrollo del derechoa la educación en la jurisprudencia de la Corte Constitucional; termina con unas críticas alproyecto de reforma de la educación superior y unas sugerencias con miras a proponer a laeducación como un derecho fundamental.