Expecting Trouble

Sample

Xingzhu Liu

This study is a result of trying to answer for the WHO the question, "Are there any policy tools that have been shown to improve the allocative efficiency of health care provision?" It does not simply tell policy-makers which tools to take up, but rather how to determine which ones are more likely to be feasible and effective, given particular circumstances of political and administrative capacity, knowledge on the part of both providers and consumers, and other factors which affect whether a policy tool can be used, and with what outcome.

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Charles E. Rosenberg

Historian of medicine Rosenberg presents an analysis of the current tensions in American medicine. Situating these tensions within their historical and social contexts, Rosenberg investigates the fundamental characteristics of medicine: how we think about disease, how the medical profession thinks about itself and its moral and intellectual responsibilities, and what prospective patients--all of us--expect from medicine and the medical profession. He explores the nature and definition of disease and how ideas of disease causation reflect social values and cultural negotiations. His analyses of alternative medicine and bioethics consider the historically specific ways in which we define and seek to control what is appropriately medical. At a time when clinical care and biomedical research generate as much angst as they offer cures, this volume provides valuable insight into how the practice of medicine has evolved, where it is going, and how lessons from history can improve its prognosis.--From publisher description.

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Thomas S. Bodenheimer, Kevin Grumbach

Expert practitioners in both the public and private healthcare sectors, the authors cover the entire scope of our healthcare system. From the concepts behind policy decisions to concrete examples of how they affect patients and professionals alike. Understanding Health Policy, 6e makes otherwise difficult concepts easy to understand.so you can make better decisions, improve outcomes, and enact positive change on a daily basis.

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Robert M. Veatch

Robert Veatch, one of the founding fathers of contemporary bioethics, sheds light on a fundamental change sweeping through the American health care system, a change that puts the patient in charge of treatment to an unprecedented extent. The change is in how we think about medical decision-making. Whereas medicine's core idea was that medical decisions should be based on the hard facts of science--the province of the doctor--the "new medicine" contends that medical decisions impose value judgments. Since physicians are not trained to make value judgments, the pendulum has swung greatly toward the patient in making decisions about their treatment. Veatch shows how this has been true only for value-loaded interventions (abortion, euthanasia, genetics) but is coming to be true for almost every routine procedure in medicine, and uses a range of examples to argue that this change is inevitable and a positive trend for patients.--From publisher description.