"Since the first edition of Who Shall Live? (1974), over 100,000 students, teachers, physicians, and general readers from more than a dozen fields have found this book to be a reader-friendly, authoritative introduction to economic concepts applied to health and medical care. Health care is by far the largest industry in the United States. It is three times larger than education and five times as large as national defense. In 2001, Americans spent over 12,500 per person for hospitals, physicians, drugs and other health care services and goods. Other high-income democracies spend one third less, enjoy three more years of life expectancy, and have more equal access to medical care. In this book, each of the chapters of the original edition is followed by supplementary readings on such subjects as: "Social Determinants of Health: Caveats and Nuances", "The Structure of Medical Education - It's Time For a Change", and "How to Save 1 Trillion Out of Health Care". The ten years following publication of the 2nd expanded edition in 2011 were arguably more turbulent for US health and health care than any other ten-year period since World War II. They span the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the deepening opioid epidemic, and the physical, psychological, and socio-economic traumas of the Covid-19 pandemic. An important new contribution to this book is to describe and analyze the changes in five sections: "The Affordable Care Act and the Uninsured", "Health care Expenditures", Health Outcomes", "The Covid-19 Pandemic", and "Health and Politics". This part includes 24 tables and figures. This book will be welcomed by students, professionals, and life-long learners to gain increased understanding of the relation between health, economics, and social choice"--

Reform of the welfare sector is an important yet difficult challenge for all countries in transition from socialist central planning to market-oriented democracies. Here a scholar of the economics of socialism and post-socialist transition and a health economist take on this challenge. This 2001 book offers health sector reform recommendations for ten countries of Eastern Europe, drawn consistently from a set of explicit guiding principles. After discussing sector-specific characteristics, lessons of international experience, and the main set of initial conditions, the authors advocate reforms based on organized public financing for basic care, private financing for supplementary care, pluralistic delivery of services, and managed competition. Policymakers need to achieve a balance, both assuring social solidarity through universal access to basic health services and expanding individual choice and responsibility through voluntary supplemental insurance. The authors also consider the problems that undermine effectiveness of market-based competition in the health sector.

This issues-based reference work (available in both print and electronic formats) shines a spotlight on health care policy and practice in the United States. Impassioned debates about the best solutions to health care in America have perennially erupted among politicians, scholars of public policy, medical professionals, and the general public. The fight over the Health Care Reform Act of 2010 brought to light a multitude of fears, challenges, obstacles, and passions that often had the effect of complicating rather than clarifying the debate. The discourse has never been more heated. The complex issues that animate the health care debate have forced the American public to grapple with the exigencies of the present system with regard to economic, fiscal, and monetary policy, especially as they relate to philosophical, often ideologically driven approaches to the problem. Americans have also had to examine their ideas about the relationship of the individual to and interaction with the state and the varied social and cultural beliefs about what an American solution to the problem of health care looks like. In light of the need to keep students, researchers, and other interested readers informed and up-to-date on the issues surrounding health care in the U.S., this volume uses introductory essays followed by point/counterpoint articles to explore prominent and perennially important debates, providing readers with views on multiple sides of this complex issue. Features & Benefits: The volume is divided into three sections, each with its own Section Editor: Quality of Care Debates (Dr. Jennie Kronenfeld), Economic & Fiscal Debates (Dr. Mark Zezza), and Political, Philosophical, & Legal Debates (Prof. Wendy Parmet). Sections open with a Preface by the Section Editor to introduce the broad theme at hand and provide historical underpinnings. Each Section holds 12 chapters addressing varied aspects of the broad theme of the section. Chapters open with an objective, lead-in piece (or "headnote") followed by a point article and a counterpoint article. All pieces (headnote, point article, counterpoint article) are signed. For each chapter, students are referred to further readings, data sources, and other resources as a jumping-off spot for further research and more in-depth exploration. Finally, the volume concludes with a comprehensive index, and the electronic version of the book includes search-and-browse features, as well as the ability to link to further readings cited within chapters should they be available to the library in electronic format.