The Roots of Discontent with Managed Care

Complaints about managed care hang thick in the health care atmosphere of the United States. Critics grumble that managed care, by virtue of the incentives it produces, stands at odds to the delivery of quality health care. Whereas traditional health plans pay on a fee-for-service basis, managed care health plans pay health care providers a capitative fee or a per-head payment for each patient.

Gene Therapy: Techniques of Cell Transfection

It is a common sight at airports: a planeload of people sitting and waiting for their delayed flight. The passengers are set to go, but an inadequacy in the transport system has stalled travel. A similar transportation problem has developed since the sequencing of the human genome. Although some newly-sequenced genes may help cure genetic diseases by altering the genetic program of the cells, a treatment called gene therapy, there is still no reliable, completely successful method to transport these reparative genes into disease-causing cells.