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Patients suffering from "lifestyle" conditions are most often viewed as responsible for their illness, and so not considered to be a priority for healthcare resources. Instead, their treatment is financed on instrumental grounds: it is better to treat the condition now than to incur higher costs later of not doing so. An alternative register of justification at work in public healthcare policies is not motivated by instrumental considerations. Instead, it seeks to articulate an ethical case for prioritizing lifestyle conditions. Within this framework, we draw on the notion of vital need within the tradition of humanistic philosophy to argue that solidarity justifies the treatment of such conditions, exemplified here by obesity. We use the theoretical framework of economics of convention to present these two registers of justification at work in public healthcare policies. The importance of humanistic criticism prevents instrumental logic from being completely dominant.

Targeting Iran / [conversation with] Noam Chomsky -- The mullahs face off : Washington versus Tehran / [conversation with] Ervand Abrahamian -- Culture and resistance : writing back to power / [conversation with] Nahid Mozaffari

"Inflation targeting is a monetary-policy strategy that is characterized by an announced numerical inflation target, an implementation of monetary policy that gives a major role to an inflation forecast and has been called forecast targeting, and a high degree of transparency and accountability. It was introduced in New Zealand in 1990, has been very successful in terms of stabilizing both inflation and the real economy, and has, as of 2010, been adopted by about 25 industrialized and emerging-market economies. The chapter discusses the history, macroeconomic effects, theory, practice, and future of inflation targeting"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site

Education reformers have zeroed in on a measure known as the value-added approach. According to this method, you calculate the effectiveness of individual teachers by the increase in test scores that students demonstrate after a year in their classroom. In this article, I explore three major questions that arise from the increased prominence of value-added metrics in the education reform movement. Why did the value-added measure of teaching emerge at this point in the history of American education? What are the core characteristics of teaching as a professional practice that make it so hard to perform effectively and so hard to measure accurately? And under these circumstances, what are the likely consequences of using the value-added measure of teaching?

The mantra of the current school reform in the US is that high-quality teachers produce high-achieving students. As a result, the educational system should hold teachers accountable for student outcomes, offering bonus pay to the most effective teachers and shoving the least effective ones out the door. In order to implement such a policy, a valid and reliable measure of teacher quality, and the reformers have zeroed in on one such measure, which is known as the value-added approach. This article explores three major questions that arise from this development: 1) why did the value-added measure of teaching emerge at this point in the history of American education?; 2) What are the core characteristics of teaching as a professional practice that make it so hard to perform effectively and so hard to measure accurately?; and 3) And under these circumstances, what are the likely consequences of using the value-added measure of teaching? Adapted from the source document.