Author: Cotton M. Lindsay

Publisher: HOEPLI EDITORE

Published: 1980

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780917616372

This volume is a revised edition of The Institute for Contemporary Study's report on national health insurance (NHI). The debate on the NHI program has broadened in re-cent years as a greatly intensified public consciousness about costs has been faced with an enormous drain on public budgets from greatly underestimated cost esti-mates for Medicare and Medicaid. As budget limitations reduced prospects for a full, comprehen-sive plan, the policy debate broad-ened. The Carter administration began to emphasize its program for hospital cost containment, focus-ing on that medical sector which had shown greatest cost increases. Moreover, other proposals began to make their way through con-gressional committees to change in a fundamental way the incen-tives governing medical markets. These new approaches-which seek, fundamentally, to increase competition among providers of medical care-have appeared at a time when it is becoming clear that more conventional regulatory ef-forts at cost control have not been successful in other countries, such as West Germany. This edition includes an analy-sis of legislation currently before Congress, an examination of hos-pital cost increases and cost con-tainment, an investigation of the politics of the NHI that asks if any major interest group involved in health care wants increased com-petition, new research on both the NHS in Britain and Canada's rela-tively recent experiments with full NHI, a discussion of the subsidy of health care, and an analysis of the market for medical care and the effects of an NHI on the market for physicians.