In the definitive inside account of the United States' failed response to the Coronavirus pandemic, Slavitt chronicles what he saw and how much could have been prevented. The result is an unflinching investigation of the cultural, political, and economic drivers that led to unnecessary loss of life. Readers will be in the room as fateful decisions are made, meeting people at the center of the political system, health care system, patients, and caregivers. The story that emerges is one of a country in which bad leadership, political and cultural fractures, and an unwillingness to sustain sacrifice light a fuse that is difficult to extinguish. -- adapted from jacket

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.

How involved should the government be in American healthcare? Ronald Hamowy argues that to answer this pressing question, we must understand the genesis of the five main federal agencies charged with responsibility for our health: the Public Health Service, the Food and Drug Administration, the Veterans Administration, the National Institutes of Health, and Medicare. In examining these, he traces the growth of federal influence from its tentative beginnings in 1798 through the ambitious infrastructures of today - and offers startling insights on the current debate. The author contends that until the twentieth century, governmental involvement in health care policy was nominal. With the sweeping food and drug reforms of 1906 and the Medicare amendments to Social Security in 1965, a whole new system of health care was brought to the American public. A careful analysis of the various programs generated by this legislation, however, shows a different picture of pet projects, budgetary lobbying, competitive bureaucracy and discord between the agencies and their opposition. Government and Public Health in America provides an illuminating look at the complicated forces that created these institutions and provokes discussion about their usefulness in the future. Hamowy's thoroughly researched analysis fills a substantial gap in the history of health policy. Economists, political scientists, historians, sociologists and health professionals concerned with the interface between government and health care will find much to recommend in this highly readable account of a fascinating topic.

John Marks is something of a national treasure. Warm, funny, passionate, opinionated and occasionally contrary, he is a man whose life for more than 40 years marched in beat with that of the National Health Service. There is scarcely a medical issue or controversy in which John Marks was not involved. Abortion law reform, the doctors' 1970s revolt against the General Medical Council, the foundation of the Royal College of General Practitioners, countless NHS reorganizations, and the bloody battle over NHS pay beds and the pay of junior doctors are just a sample.Then there was the fierce, principled battle over how the medical profession and the public should respond to the terror of a new disease - AIDS. And the great war that was fought over the Conservatives introduction of market forces into the NHS in the late 1980s and early 1990s - an approach to running the NHS that lives on, reincarnated, under the current Labor government.In all of these John Marks played more than a walk-on part. In many he was a principal actor. For anyone wanting fully to understand the BMA's role in all this, this book is thus required reading. But it is much more than just a dry history of times past. It is laced with anecdote, from the horrifying to the hilarious, and on to high politics. John Marks' account of his life and times provides the tale of a warm, human, liberal and occasionally buccaneering man whose passion for life and causes leaves even those who do not always agree with him eager to count him among their friends.