Download or read book Ensuring America s Health written by Christy Ford Chapin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-28 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ensuring America's Health explains why the US health care system offers world-class medical services to some patients but is also exceedingly costly, with fragmented care, poor distribution, and increasingly bureaucratized processes. Based on exhaustive historical research, this work traces how public and private power merged to favor a distinctive economic model that places insurance companies at the center of the system, where they both finance and oversee medical care. Although the insurance company model was created during the 1930s, it continues to drive health care cost and quality problems today. This wide-ranging work not only evaluates the overarching political and economic framework of the medical system but also provides rich narrative detail, examining the political dramas, corporate maneuverings, and forceful personalities that created American health care as we know it. This book breaks new ground in the fields of health care history, organizational studies, and American political economy.
Download or read book Access to Health Care in America written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1993-02-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.
Download or read book U S Health in International Perspective written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-04-12 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.
Download or read book The American Health Care Paradox written by Elizabeth H. Bradley and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foreword by Harvey V. Fineberg, President of the Institute of Medicine For decades, experts have puzzled over why the US spends more on health care but suffers poorer outcomes than other industrialized nations. Now Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. Taylor marshal extensive research, including a comparative study of health care data from thirty countries, and get to the root of this paradox: We've left out of our tally the most impactful expenditures countries make to improve the health of their populations-investments in social services. In The American Health Care Paradox, Bradley and Taylor illuminate how narrow definitions of "health care," archaic divisions in the distribution of health and social services, and our allergy to government programs combine to create needless suffering in individual lives, even as health care spending continues to soar. They show us how and why the US health care "system" developed as it did; examine the constraints on, and possibilities for, reform; and profile inspiring new initiatives from around the world. Offering a unique and clarifying perspective on the problems the Affordable Care Act won't solve, this book also points a new way forward.
Download or read book America s Uninsured Crisis written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When policy makers and researchers consider potential solutions to the crisis of uninsurance in the United States, the question of whether health insurance matters to health is often an issue. This question is far more than an academic concern. It is crucial that U.S. health care policy be informed with current and valid evidence on the consequences of uninsurance for health care and health outcomes, especially for the 45.7 million individuals without health insurance. From 2001 to 2004, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued six reports, which concluded that being uninsured was hazardous to people's health and recommended that the nation move quickly to implement a strategy to achieve health insurance coverage for all. The goal of this book is to inform the health reform policy debateâ€"in 2009â€"with an up-to-date assessment of the research evidence. This report addresses three key questions: What are the dynamics driving downward trends in health insurance coverage? Is being uninsured harmful to the health of children and adults? Are insured people affected by high rates of uninsurance in their communities?
Download or read book Who Killed HealthCare America s 2 Trillion Medical Problem and the Consumer Driven Cure written by Regina Herzlinger and published by McGraw Hill Professional. This book was released on 2007-04-17 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A renowned authority from Harvard Business School confronts America's health care crisis-and how consumer control can fix it PRAISE FOR WHO KILLED HEALTHCARE? “A brilliant analysis... A must-read.” – Bill George, Professor, Harvard Business School and Former CEO of Medtronic “As it becomes more and more obvious to everyone that our current health care system is unsustainable, this is the book that had to be written.” – Daniel H. Johnson, Jr. MD, former president of the American Medical Association “Regina Herzlinger’s ideas to tackle the crisis of the U.S. health care system are based on keen knowledge of the system’s existing difficulties along with insights that introduce the reader to new streamlined choices that have the potential of getting both quantity and cost under control.” – Joseph Kennedy, founder, chairman, and president, Citizens Energy Corporation, CEO, Citizens Health Care, former representative (D-Mass) “Regina Herzlinger... offers a vision of the way things can be, should be, and will be sooner or later. The only question is: how long do we have to wait?” – Greg Scandlen, founder, Consumers for Health Choices“Regi Herzlinger has brilliantly articulated a better way – embracing the principles of competition and innovation that cause every other sector of our economy to thrive. Discharging American health care from the ICU can only happen by putting individual Americans – not politicians and bureaucrats – back in charge of their health care decisioins.” – U.S. Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla), M.D. “Following on the heels of her landmark Market-Driven Health Care, Herzlinger lays it on the line with her expose of what many who work in the health care industry have felt in their gut. Now it is articulated in an entertaining and must-read portrayal, with you and me as the only way out.” – Dennis White, executive vice president for strategic development, National Business Coalition on Health“A wonderful Orwellian romp through issues which carry a deadly irony. The killers of health care are, of course, the third parties, each of which has an itchy palm and a commitment to profit or power which exceeds the commitment to service, with each engaging the others within a politically shaped box. Rarely has the case for the public been made with so much force, foresight, and wit, and a better way forward shown so clearly.” – James F. Fries, MD, Professor of Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine “You can practically hear the war chants as Professor Herzlinger sets out her view of what’s wrong with the health care system and how to fix it. You’d best read it so you can decide which side you will be on when the battle is joined.” – Paul Levy, CEO, Beth Israel Hospital, Boston, MA “Regina Herzlinger, the nation’s leading expert on consumer-driven health care, has given us a brilliant analysis of the flaws in our health care system and what it will take to get it back on track. Her latest book is a must-read.” – Bill George, Professor of Management Practice, Harvard Business School, Former CEO, Medtronic, and author of Authentic Leadership“You don’t have to agree with her diagnosis and prescription for the U.S. health care system, but you do have to read her book. Once again, Professor Herzlinger has put together a well researched, well written, and very provocative blueprint for the future of health care.” Peter L. Slavin, MD, President, Massachusetts General Hospital
Download or read book America s Health in Transition Protecting and Improving Quality written by Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Council and published by . This book was released on 1994 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Protecting America s Health written by Philip J. Hilts and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Emerging out of Theodore Roosevelt's desire to civilize capitalism, the Food and Drug Administration was created to stop the trade in adulterated meats and quack drugs. This history of the agency takes readers back to its beginnings, and makes startlingly clear the essential role the FDA has played in maintaining the quality of life and health to which the American public has long been accustomed.
Download or read book The Healing of America written by T. R. Reid and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2010-08-31 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Bestseller, with an updated explanation of the 2010 Health Reform Bill "Important and powerful . . . a rich tour of health care around the world." —Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times Bringing to bear his talent for explaining complex issues in a clear, engaging way, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid visits industrialized democracies around the world--France, Britain, Germany, Japan, and beyond--to provide a revelatory tour of successful, affordable universal health care systems. Now updated with new statistics and a plain-English explanation of the 2010 health care reform bill, The Healing of America is required reading for all those hoping to understand the state of health care in our country, and around the world. T. R. Reid's latest book, A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System, is also available from Penguin Press.
Download or read book Your Money or Your Life written by David M. Cutler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-02-05 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The problems of medical care confront us daily: a bureaucracy that makes a trip to the doctor worse than a trip to the dentist, doctors who can't practice medicine the way they choose, more than 40 million people without health insurance. "Medical care is in crisis," we are repeatedly told, and so it is. Barely one in five Americans thinks the medical system works well. Enter David M. Cutler, a Harvard economist who served on President Clinton's health care task force and later advised presidential candidate Bill Bradley. One of the nation's leading experts on the subject, Cutler argues in Your Money or Your Life that health care has in fact improved exponentially over the last fifty years, and that the successes of our system suggest ways in which we might improve care, make the system easier to deal with, and extend coverage to all Americans. Cutler applies an economic analysis to show that our spending on medicine is well worth it--and that we could do even better by spending more. Further, millions of people with easily manageable diseases, from hypertension to depression to diabetes, receive either too much or too little care because of inefficiencies in the way we reimburse care, resulting in poor health and in some cases premature death. The key to improving the system, Cutler argues, is to change the way we organize health care. Everyone must be insured for the medical system to perform well, and payments should be based on the quality of services provided not just on the amount of cutting and poking performed. Lively and compelling, Your Money or Your Life offers a realistic yet rigorous economic approach to reforming health care--one that promises to break through the stalemate of failed reform.
Download or read book Insuring America s Health written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2004-02-14 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the Census Bureau, in 2003 more than 43 million Americans lacked health insurance. Being uninsured is associated with a range of adverse health, social, and economic consequences for individuals and their families, for the health care systems in their communities, and for the nation as a whole. This report is the sixth and final report in a series by the Committee on the Consequences of Uninsurance, intended to synthesize what is known about these consequences and communicate the extent and urgency of the issue to the public. Insuring America's Health recommends principles related to universality, continuity of coverage, affordability to individuals and society, and quality of care to guide health insurance reform. These principles are based on the evidence reviewed in the committee's previous five reports and on new analyses of past and present federal, state, and local efforts to reduce uninsurance. The report also demonstrates how those principles can be used to assess policy options. The committee does not recommend a specific coverage strategy. Rather, it shows how various approaches could extend coverage and achieve certain of the committee's principles.
Download or read book Improving America s Diet and Health written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1991-01-01 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written and organized to be accessible to a wide range of readers, Improving America's Diet and Health explores how Americans can be persuaded to adopt healthier eating habits. Moving well beyond the "pamphlet and public service announcement" approach to dietary change, this volume investigates current eating patterns in this country, consumers' beliefs and attitudes about food and nutrition, the theory and practice of promoting healthy behaviors, and needs for further research. The core of the volume consists of strategies and actions targeted to sectors of societyâ€"government, the private sector, the health professions, the education communityâ€"that have special responsibilities for encouraging and enabling consumers to eat better. These recommendations form the basis for three principal strategies necessary to further the implementation of dietary recommendations in the United States.
Download or read book An American Sickness written by Elisabeth Rosenthal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Surgeon General s Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity written by and published by Office of the Surgeon General. This book was released on 2001 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Promotes the recognition, treatment, and prevention of conditions of overweight and obesity in the United States.
Download or read book The Long Fix written by Vivian Lee and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2021-08-17 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It may not be a quick fix, but this concrete action plan for reform can create a less costly and healthier system for all. Beyond the outrageous expense, the quality of care varies wildly, and millions of Americans can’t get care when they need it. This is bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for business. In The Long Fix, physician and health care CEO Vivian S. Lee, MD, cuts to the heart of the health care crisis. The problem with the way medicine is practiced, she explains, is not so much who’s paying, it’s what we are paying for. Insurers, employers, the government, and individuals pay for every procedure, prescription, and lab test, whether or not it makes us better—and that is both backward and dangerous. Dr. Lee proposes turning the way we receive care completely inside out. When doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies are paid to keep people healthy, care improves and costs decrease. Lee shares inspiring examples of how this has been done, from physicians’ practices that prioritize preventative care, to hospitals that adapt lessons from manufacturing plants to make them safer, to health care organizations that share online how much care costs and how well each physician is caring for patients. Using clear and compelling language, Dr. Lee paints a picture that is both realistic and optimistic. It may not be a quick fix, but her concrete action plan for reform—for employers and other payers, patients, clinicians, and policy makers—can reinvent health care, and create a less costly, more efficient, and healthier system for all.
Download or read book America s Bitter Pill written by Steven Brill and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 603 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.”—The New York Times America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation. But by chance America’s Bitter Pill ends up being much more—because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare “policy” rethinks it from a hospital gurney—and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result: a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. Praise for America’s Bitter Pill “An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.”—The New York Times Book Review “A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the ‘toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system.’ ”—Los Angeles Times “A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.”—The Daily Beast “One of the most important books of our time.”—Walter Isaacson “Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossible—written an exciting book about the American health system.”—The New York Review of Books
Download or read book Primary Care written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1996-09-05 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ask for a definition of primary care, and you are likely to hear as many answers as there are health care professionals in your survey. Primary Care fills this gap with a detailed definition already adopted by professional organizations and praised at recent conferences. This volume makes recommendations for improving primary care, building its organization, financing, infrastructure, and knowledge baseâ€"as well as developing a way of thinking and acting for primary care clinicians. Are there enough primary care doctors? Are they merely gatekeepers? Is the traditional relationship between patient and doctor outmoded? The committee draws conclusions about these and other controversies in a comprehensive and up-to-date discussion that covers: The scope of primary care. Its philosophical underpinnings. Its value to the patient and the community. Its impact on cost, access, and quality. This volume discusses the needs of special populations, the role of the capitation method of payment, and more. Recommendations are offered for achieving a more multidisciplinary education for primary care clinicians. Research priorities are identified. Primary Care provides a forward-thinking view of primary care as it should be practiced in the new integrated health care delivery systemsâ€"important to health care clinicians and those who train and employ them, policymakers at all levels, health care managers, payers, and interested individuals.
