Between 1850 and 1900, Milwaukee’s rapid population growth also gave rise to high death rates, infectious diseases, crowded housing, filthy streets, inadequate water supplies, and incredible stench. The Healthiest City shows how a coalition of reform groups brought about community education and municipal action to achieve for Milwaukee the title of “the healthiest city” by the 1930s. This highly praised book reminds us that cutting funds and regulations for preserving public health results in inconvenience, illness, and even death. “A major work. . . . Leavitt focuses on three illustrative issues—smallpox, garbage, and milk, representing the larger areas of infectious disease, sanitation, and food control.”—Norman Gevitz, Journal of the American Medical Association “Leavitt’s research provides additional evidence . . . that improvements in sanitation, living conditions, and diet contributed more to the overall decline in mortality rates than advances in medical practice. . . . A solid contribution to the history of urban reform politics and public health.”—Jo Ann Carrigan, Journal of American History

"The future of employer-provided health insurance is a #1 concern for business owners, financial executives and insurance professionals. Existing "health insurance" books focus only on public policy or consumers. Using the techniques outlined in this book, employers and their workers learn to save money on health insurance by migrating from group to individual plans at a total cost that is 20-60% lower for the same coverage (That's a savings of $4,000-$12,000 per year for a family of four). We are at the beginning of a huge transformation in the health insurance industry in which 120 million people are expected to move from group to individual insurance by 2025. Similar to the shift from defined benefit pensions to defined contribution 401(k) plans, the end of employer-provided health insurance will create opportunities for new entrants the way 401(k) plans led to the massive growth of Schwab, Fidelity and Vanguard"--

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.