Ranking: The quality of death
The Economist Intelligence Unit was commissioned by the Lien Foundation, a Singaporean philanthropic organisation, to devise a "Quality of Death" Index to rank countries according to their provision of end-of-life care.
Health reform: The debate goes public
Healthcare systems are complex, enormous and unwieldy, whether they are state-managed monoliths such as the UK’s, or dominated by the private insurance sector, as in the US. They are traditionally slow to adapt to change, but now those immovable objects are being forced to confront not just one, but several irresistible forces: demographic (ageing populations), epidemiological (increasing incidence of chronic diseases), technological (more expensive drugs and technologies) and economic (global recession, high public debt, smaller pensions).