Anyone interested in how our current healthcare dilemma came to be will be fascinated by the tales told in Health Policy--The Hard Way, for this book not only traces the inside story of the development of Blue Cross and Blue Shield through the 1956 adoption and implementation of Medicare and Medicaid, but also analyzes the medical malpractice tort reform crisis of 1975, up to and including the shift to managed care. It is an important document for those who want to track what has happened to healthcare during these decades as well as providing an important springboard for all those interested in addressing the predicament of current healthcare needs. This is a wonderful resource to add to the discussion of the public heal th issues and for those trying to understand how the United States, albeit one of the wealthiest nations in all history, cannot provide an adequate national health policy program for its citizens. The author, a founder of the specialty of health-care law, is especially well-suited to assess this vital issue, having provided legal and policy counsel to more than 100 hospitals and healthcare organizations.

Many Americans believe that people who lack health insurance somehow get the care they really need. Care Without Coverage examines the real consequences for adults who lack health insurance. The study presents findings in the areas of prevention and screening, cancer, chronic illness, hospital-based care, and general health status. The committee looked at the consequences of being uninsured for people suffering from cancer, diabetes, HIV infection and AIDS, heart and kidney disease, mental illness, traumatic injuries, and heart attacks. It focused on the roughly 30 million-one in seven-working-age Americans without health insurance. This group does not include the population over 65 that is covered by Medicare or the nearly 10 million children who are uninsured in this country. The main findings of the report are that working-age Americans without health insurance are more likely to receive too little medical care and receive it too late; be sicker and die sooner; and receive poorer care when they are in the hospital, even for acute situations like a motor vehicle crash.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

This book takes bioethics and health policy to a new level of integration. Moving beyond principles and normative frameworks, bioethicsists writing in the volume consider the actual policy problems faced by health care systems, while policy-makers reflect on the moral values inherent in both the process and content of health policy. Together, they explore the goals and processes involved in developing health policy and examine the roles of various stakeholders as well as the thorny ethical issues that arise.

Governing Health examines health care policy from a political perspective, describing how Congress, the president, special interest groups, bureaucracy, and state governments help define health policy problems and find politically feasible solutions. William G. Weissert and Carol S. Weissert provide a highly readable and comprehensive synthesis of political science research on how government and private institutions affect the policy process. Extensive reviews of the policies that have governed health care since Lyndon Johnson's administration are capped off with a prognosis for the future. Updates to the fourth edition of Governing Health include • new examples and theory perspectives• recent statistics• discussion of the 2010 Obama health reform