Download or read book The American Health Care Paradox written by Elizabeth Bradley and published by Public Affairs. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considers why U.S. society is believed to be less healthy in spite of disproportionate spending on health care, identifying a lack of social services, outdated care allocations, and a resistance to government programs as the problem.
Download or read book Health Care Under the Knife written by Howard Waitzkin and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Disobedience : doctor workers unite! / Howard Waitzkin -- Becoming employees : the deprofessionalization and emerging social class position of health professionals / Matt Anderson -- The degradation of medical labor and the meaning of quality in health care / Gordon Schiff and Sarah Winch -- The political economy of health reform / David Himmelstein and Steffie Woolhandler -- The transformation of the medical industrial complex : financialization, the corporate sector, and monopoly capital / Matt Anderson and Robb Burlage -- The pharmaceutical industry in the context of contemporary capitalism / Joel Lexchin -- Obamacare : the neoliberal model comes home to roost in the United States, if we let it / Howard Waitzkin and Ida Hellander -- Austerity and health / Adam Gaffney and Carles Muntaner -- Imperialism's health component / Howard Waitzkin and Rebeca Jasso-Aguilar -- U.S. philanthrocapitalism and the global health agenda : the Rockefeller and Gates foundations, past and present / Anne-Emanuelle Birn and Judith Richter -- Resisting the imperial order and building an alternative future in medicine and public health / Rebeca Jasso-Aguilar and Howard Waitzkin -- The failure of Obamacare and a revision of the single payer proposal after a quarter century of struggle / Adam Gaffney, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler -- Overcoming pathological normalcy : mental health challenges in the coming transformation / Carl Ratner -- Confronting the social and environmental determinants of health / Carles Muntaner and Rob Wallace -- Conclusion : moving beyond capitalism for our health / Adam Gaffney and Howard Waitzkin
Download or read book Plagues and the Paradox of Progress written by Thomas J. Bollyky and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why the news about the global decline of infectious diseases is not all good. Plagues and parasites have played a central role in world affairs, shaping the evolution of the modern state, the growth of cities, and the disparate fortunes of national economies. This book tells that story, but it is not about the resurgence of pestilence. It is the story of its decline. For the first time in recorded history, virus, bacteria, and other infectious diseases are not the leading cause of death or disability in any region of the world. People are living longer, and fewer mothers are giving birth to many children in the hopes that some might survive. And yet, the news is not all good. Recent reductions in infectious disease have not been accompanied by the same improvements in income, job opportunities, and governance that occurred with these changes in wealthier countries decades ago. There have also been unintended consequences. In this book, Thomas Bollyky explores the paradox in our fight against infectious disease: the world is getting healthier in ways that should make us worry. Bollyky interweaves a grand historical narrative about the rise and fall of plagues in human societies with contemporary case studies of the consequences. Bollyky visits Dhaka—one of the most densely populated places on the planet—to show how low-cost health tools helped enable the phenomenon of poor world megacities. He visits China and Kenya to illustrate how dramatic declines in plagues have affected national economies. Bollyky traces the role of infectious disease in the migrations from Ireland before the potato famine and to Europe from Africa and elsewhere today. Historic health achievements are remaking a world that is both worrisome and full of opportunities. Whether the peril or promise of that progress prevails, Bollyky explains, depends on what we do next. A Council on Foreign Relations Book
Download or read book Best Care at Lower Cost written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2013-05-10 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's health care system has become too complex and costly to continue business as usual. Best Care at Lower Cost explains that inefficiencies, an overwhelming amount of data, and other economic and quality barriers hinder progress in improving health and threaten the nation's economic stability and global competitiveness. According to this report, the knowledge and tools exist to put the health system on the right course to achieve continuous improvement and better quality care at a lower cost. The costs of the system's current inefficiency underscore the urgent need for a systemwide transformation. About 30 percent of health spending in 2009-roughly $750 billion-was wasted on unnecessary services, excessive administrative costs, fraud, and other problems. Moreover, inefficiencies cause needless suffering. By one estimate, roughly 75,000 deaths might have been averted in 2005 if every state had delivered care at the quality level of the best performing state. This report states that the way health care providers currently train, practice, and learn new information cannot keep pace with the flood of research discoveries and technological advances. About 75 million Americans have more than one chronic condition, requiring coordination among multiple specialists and therapies, which can increase the potential for miscommunication, misdiagnosis, potentially conflicting interventions, and dangerous drug interactions. Best Care at Lower Cost emphasizes that a better use of data is a critical element of a continuously improving health system, such as mobile technologies and electronic health records that offer significant potential to capture and share health data better. In order for this to occur, the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, IT developers, and standard-setting organizations should ensure that these systems are robust and interoperable. Clinicians and care organizations should fully adopt these technologies, and patients should be encouraged to use tools, such as personal health information portals, to actively engage in their care. This book is a call to action that will guide health care providers; administrators; caregivers; policy makers; health professionals; federal, state, and local government agencies; private and public health organizations; and educational institutions.
Download or read book Crossing the Quality Chasm written by Institute of Medicine and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-07-19 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Second in a series of publications from the Institute of Medicine's Quality of Health Care in America project Today's health care providers have more research findings and more technology available to them than ever before. Yet recent reports have raised serious doubts about the quality of health care in America. Crossing the Quality Chasm makes an urgent call for fundamental change to close the quality gap. This book recommends a sweeping redesign of the American health care system and provides overarching principles for specific direction for policymakers, health care leaders, clinicians, regulators, purchasers, and others. In this comprehensive volume the committee offers: A set of performance expectations for the 21st century health care system. A set of 10 new rules to guide patient-clinician relationships. A suggested organizing framework to better align the incentives inherent in payment and accountability with improvements in quality. Key steps to promote evidence-based practice and strengthen clinical information systems. Analyzing health care organizations as complex systems, Crossing the Quality Chasm also documents the causes of the quality gap, identifies current practices that impede quality care, and explores how systems approaches can be used to implement change.
Download or read book Introduction to U S Health Policy written by Donald A. Barr and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 659 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Health care reform has dominated public discourse over the past several years, and the recent passage of the Affordable Care Act, rather than quell the rhetoric, has sparked even more debate. Donald A. Barr reviews the current structure of the American health care system, describing the historical and political contexts in which it developed and the core policy issues that continue to confront us today. This comprehensive analysis introduces the various organizations and institutions that make the U.S. health care system work—or fail to work, as the case may be. A principal message of the book is the seeming paradox of the quality of health care in this country—on the one hand it is the best medical care system in the world, on the other it is one of the worst among developed countries because of how it is organized. Barr introduces readers to broad cultural issues surrounding health care policy, such as access, affordability, and quality. He discusses specific elements of U.S. health care, including insurance, especially Medicare and Medicaid, the shift to for-profit managed care, the pharmaceutical industry, issues of long-term care, the plight of the uninsured, medical errors, and nursing shortages. The latest edition of this widely adopted text updates the description and discussion of key sectors of America’s health care system in light of the Affordable Care Act.
Download or read book The Paradox of Hope written by Cheryl Mattingly and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010-12-02 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grounded in intimate moments of family life in and out of hospitals, this book explores the hope that inspires us to try to create lives worth living, even when no cure is in sight. The Paradox of Hope focuses on a group of African American families in a multicultural urban environment, many of them poor and all of them with children who have been diagnosed with serious chronic medical conditions. Cheryl Mattingly proposes a narrative phenomenology of practice as she explores case stories in this highly readable study. Depicting the multicultural urban hospital as a border zone where race, class, and chronic disease intersect, this theoretically innovative study illuminates communities of care that span both clinic and family and shows how hope is created as an everyday reality amid trying circumstances.
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 Paradoxes of Care written by Rania Kassab Sweis and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-29 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Each year, billions of dollars are spent on global humanitarian health initiatives. These efforts are intended to care for suffering bodies, especially those of distressed children living in poverty. But as global medical aid can often overlook the local economic and political systems that cause bodily suffering, it can also unintentionally prolong the very conditions that hurt children and undermine local aid givers. Investigating medical humanitarian encounters in Egypt, Paradoxes of Care illustrates how child aid recipients and local aid experts grapple with global aid's shortcomings and its paradoxical outcomes. Rania Kassab Sweis examines how some of the world's largest aid organizations care for vulnerable children in Egypt, focusing on medical efforts with street children and out-of-school village girls. Her in-depth ethnographic study reveals how global medical aid fails to "save" these children according to its stated aims, and often maintains—or produces new—social disparities in children's lives. Foregrounding vulnerable children's responses to medical aid, Sweis moves past the unquestioned benevolence of global health to demonstrate how children must manage their own bodies and lives in the absence of adult care. With this book, she challenges readers to engage with the question of what medical caregivers and donors alike gain from such global humanitarian transactions.
Download or read book Redefining Health Care written by Michael E. Porter and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2006-04-24 with total page 540 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The U.S. health care system is in crisis. At stake are the quality of care for millions of Americans and the financial well-being of individuals and employers squeezed by skyrocketing premiums—not to mention the stability of state and federal government budgets. In Redefining Health Care, internationally renowned strategy expert Michael Porter and innovation expert Elizabeth Teisberg reveal the underlying—and largely overlooked—causes of the problem, and provide a powerful prescription for change. The authors argue that competition currently takes place at the wrong level—among health plans, networks, and hospitals—rather than where it matters most, in the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of specific health conditions. Participants in the system accumulate bargaining power and shift costs in a zero-sum competition, rather than creating value for patients. Based on an exhaustive study of the U.S. health care system, Redefining Health Care lays out a breakthrough framework for redefining the way competition in health care delivery takes place—and unleashing stunning improvements in quality and efficiency. With specific recommendations for hospitals, doctors, health plans, employers, and policy makers, this book shows how to move health care toward positive-sum competition that delivers lasting benefits 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 528 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 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 American Paradox written by Renford Reese and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over a half-century since Ralph Ellison wrote the classic book Invisible Man, black men have been trying to become visible. In various ways, black men have sought to get the attention of the world. An intense quest to become seen, heard, and felt has manifested itself in rebellious and counterproductive behavior. Whether it is the baggy pants, the bandana, the braids in the hair, the earring, or the tattoo, black men have desperately striven for visibility. Perpetual gang warfare and an overemphasis on living a glamorous lifestyle have derailed many young black men from achieving success in the U.S. Author Renford Reese examines how young African American males have unwittingly accepted one model of black masculinity. The acceptance of this "tough guy" model is having detrimental consequences on an entire generation of young black men. The book's thesis is supported by a survey the author conducted of 756 African American males from the ages of 13-19 in Los Angeles and Atlanta. This survey attempts to gauge the attitudes, perceptions, and basic knowledge of young African American men regarding black public figures. One component of this survey is a Realness Scale that the author constructed. Along with this survey, interviews were conducted with various young black males to find out why they, or many of their peers, have embraced the gangsta-thug persona. The results of the survey and interviews are fascinating. Although the primary focus of this book is on the young black male's acceptance of the gangsta-thug image and his enthusiastic embrace of society's stereotypes, this book also looks at the unkindness of the system. One would be naive to dismiss the historical impact of discriminatory policies and the systemic perpetuation of stereotypes in U.S. society. Hence, this book examines the internal and external influences on the current black male identity. American Paradox and Reese's vists to prisons in California have already begun to pay off. In the Summer 2004 issue of Cal Poly Pomona & the Community, writer Jennifer Parsons talks about Reese's efforts, mentioning that Reese keeps a note in his briefcase from a 31-year-old prisoner serving time for manslaughter. According to her article, the prisoner writes, "I used to love being looked up to for all the wrong reasons. Now, though, I'm on a whole new script. My goal is to turn my misfortunes into a fortune. I want to help inner city kids avoid situations such as my own." He goes on to say, "I look forward to your visit. There is so much in that book that I would like to speak with you on." "...Reese raises serious questions regarding the state of life among African American youth that cannot be ignored. The book, an excellent source for discussion of issues in the black community and race relations in the US, will surely be controversial. Summing up: Highly recommended." -- CHOICE Magazine, October 2004 "American Paradox: Young Black Men . . . is an eye-opening read that brings to focus some the contemporary social issues that black and white America are reluctant to discuss. I would highly recommend it for courses in sociology, political science, and black studies." -- Journal of Urban Affairs, November 2006
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 Healthcare Delivery in the U S A written by Margaret F. Schulte and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2012-12-13 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the same clarity that made the previous edition a bestseller, Healthcare Delivery in the U.S.A.: An Introduction, Second Edition provides readers with the understanding required to navigate the healthcare provider field. Brilliantly simple, yet comprehensive, this updated edition explains how recent health care reform will impact hospitals and health systems. It includes updated case studies and describes the new organizational structures being driven by current market conditions. Focusing on healthcare management, the book addresses the range of topics critical to understanding the U.S. healthcare system, including the quality of care movement, recent finance reform, and the recent increase in merger and acquisition activity. Dr. Schulte walks readers through the history of the development of U.S. healthcare delivery. She describes the various venues of care delivery as well as the different elements of the financing system. Offering a glimpse into the global market and medical tourism, the text includes coverage of legal and regulatory issues, workforce, and the drivers and barriers that are shaping healthcare delivery around the world. Painting a clear and up-to-date picture, this quick-and-easy read provides you with the understanding of the terminology, structures, roles, relationships, and nuances needed to interact effectively and efficiently with anyone in the healthcare provider field.
Download or read book The American Paradox written by Steven M. Gillon and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 2006 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This narrative text for courses in recent American history emphasizes political participation and popular culture. Its main theme is the relationship of Americans to their government—for example, how Americans as a people remain skeptical of big government even as they expect it to facilitate large programs such as Social Security. The Second Edition features a range of content enhancements, including increased coverage of events from 1970 to the present. In addition to the author's vivid, accessible writing style, the text maintains its focus on the tension between popular culture and social realities, the dynamics of minority groups and their place in American society, and the ambivalent feelings of many Americans concerning the U.S.'s role in the world during the postwar period. New! Coverage of the 1960s has been reorganized to include separate chapters on the Great Society and Vietnam. These new chapters bring clarity to a chaotic decade. New! The author has included more coverage of women—particularly their role in the rise of the New Left and in the development of Feminism—and more information about U.S. involvement in the Middle East as a foundation for understanding the war on terrorism. New! Each chapter contains up to three primary sources. New documents include excerpts from Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique; Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Montgomery bus boycott speech; and excerpts from the 9/11 Commission's final report. Unlike most postwar American history books that tend to emphasize the 50s and 60s, The American Paradox includes extensive coverage of the 1960s to the present.
Download or read book The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine written by James Le Fanu and published by Carroll & Graf Pub. This book was released on 2000 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Argues that the pace of medical discoveries has slowed in the last twenty-five years due to excessive emphasis on the social and political aspects of health care, and to controversies caused by ethical issues.
