Distressing, Painful Symptoms

Any collection of distressing, painful symptoms that occur together and that lay people assume constitute an illness even though many doctors disagree. control A process through which researchers statistically eliminate the potential influence of extraneous factors. For example, because social class and race often go together, researchers who want to investigate the impact of social class have to be sure that they are not really seeing the impact of race. To study the impact of social class on mental illness, therefore, researchers would have to look separately at the relationship between social class and mental illness among whites and then at the relationship among blacks to control for any effect of race. copayment Under some forms of health insurance, a fee that individuals must pay each time they see a health care provider. Fees can range from nominal sums to 20 percent of all costs. corporatization The growing role of investor-owned corporations in the health care field. cost shifting Raising prices charged some individuals for services received in order to make up for losses incurred when services are provided to other individuals who cannot or will not pay for services. countervailing powers The various powerful groups and institutions fighting for control over a given arena such as health care. CRISPR Regularly repeated bits of DNA from viruses that become part of the DNA of humans and other organisms, and that are now being used to alter genes. Acronym for clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats.