The UK government is introducing reforms to the internal health care market in the UK National Health Service which seek to address concerns such as these, and this book comprises a series of commentaries on their plans from a group of leading health economists. Authors examine the contribution of economics to the debate on the reforms, while seeking to make the analysis accessible to a general audience.
Examining the health care market in a historical framework, Drake analyzes the forces and events that have shaped American health care in the twentieth century and sheds new light on why and how our health care system has dampened competitive market forces and failed to provide sound value for much of our health care expenditures. He examines the roles that physicians, hospitals, insurance companies, businesses, individual consumers, and government legislation have played in creating a provider-dominated market in which the cost of care has been concealed from consumers. Comparing U.S. health care expenditures with those of other developed countries, he concludes that a significant part of our health care problem is the style of medicine practiced in the United States, which is much more specialized and high tech than in other developed nations. Drake develops proposals for health care financing reform that consider the political and economic difficulties involved. He first examines the Clinton health care reform plan and makes specific recommendations for revisions that would improve its likelihood of controlling costs. He then offers an alternative proposal that would both maintain the principle of universal, noncancelable coverage and eliminate the flaws in the market for health care services by giving consumers a financial stake in cost containment. This timely argument, combining economic and historical analysis with thoughtful consideration of the motivating humanitarian and political concerns, will be of interest to everyone seeking to understand and to reform our ailing health care system.
Using cross-country analysis and case studies, this book provides new insights and potential policy responses for the key fiscal policy challenges that both advanced and emerging economies will be facing.
In this volume, leading American health economists provide a critical assessment of the current state of knowledge of insurance market reform that is accessible to both policy-makers and researchers.
Implementing Change in Health Systems brings fresh thinking and evidence to the continuing debate about market reforms of health care and other public services. The book examines the development and implementation of national cost-containment programs and health system reorganizations in the UK, Sweden and the Netherlands countries that have been leaders in health system reform. The book provides a new framework for analyzing public policy implementation and system change, synthesizing diverse streams of academic research and thinking. It explores the processes of implementing market reforms in each country and considers the outcomes, both expected and unintended. In all three countries competitive reform encountered serious technical, organizational and political obstacles. Yet they triggered important system changes and paved the way for significant new health policies. The complex outcomes of the reforms included changes in the quality, efficiency and costs of care growing managerial and political control over physicians and other health care professionals increased influence and centrality of community-based care Diffusion of ideas and practices from business management into health care. Implementing Change in Health Systems sheds new light on crucial policy issues that are currently being debated in the United States and many other countries. The book will be of value to students, researchers, and practitioners in health policy and public policy.
A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.
HEALTH POLITICS AND POLICY, 5th Edition walks you through the inner workings of health care policymaking, from the legislative process to socioeconomic impacts, and reveals both modern and historical perspectives in exciting detail. A collection of writings by some of today's sharpest political minds and policy-makers, the book explores factors that shape the U.S. health care system and policy, such as values, government, and private players, and compares them to other countries for international context. Helpful learning features throughout include review questions and problems, supporting tables and graphs, and special Consider This essays that bolster chapter concepts. In an environment of ever-changing policies and politics, the new edition seamlessly integrates themes of the past and present-day dilemmas with a look to the future of health care politics in America. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version.
Between 1987 and 1991, the portion of Americans covered by individually purchased health insurance dropped 40per cent. Assuming the US will continue to rely on private financing for health care, the author clarifies benefits to society from an efficient health insurance market.
