Rising health care costs are a central fiscal challenge confronting the United States. National spending on health care currently accounts for 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), but is anticipated to increase to 25 percent of GDP by 2037. The Bipartisan Policy Center argues that "this rapid growth in health expenditures creates an unsustainable burden on America's economy, with far-reaching consequences". These consequences include crowding out many national priorities, including investments in education, infrastructure, and research; stagnation of employee wages; and decreased international competitiveness.In spite of health care costs that far exceed those of other countries, health outcomes in the United States are not considerably better. With the goal of ensuring that patients have access to high-quality, affordable cancer care, the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) National Cancer Policy Forum convened a public workshop, Delivering Affordable Cancer Care in the 21st Century, October 8-9, 2012, in Washington, DC. Delivering Affordable Cancer Care in the 21st Century summarizes the workshop.

A timely discussion of the nature and causes of spending increases, expanding access to Medicaid and paying providers, and the federal and state roles in financing. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

"The Nation has lost sight of its public health goals and has allowed the system of public health to fall into 'disarray'," from The Future of Public Health. This startling book contains proposals for ensuring that public health service programs are efficient and effective enough to deal not only with the topics of today, but also with those of tomorrow. In addition, the authors make recommendations for core functions in public health assessment, policy development, and service assurances, and identify the level of government--federal, state, and local--at which these functions would best be handled.

The Fifth Edition of this best-selling health policy text is updated with a collection of new articles on various health policies. Health Policy provides a basic overview of the health policy and political process as it relates to thte health status of the US, the organization and issues of the healthcare system, and healthcare economics.

Conventional wisdom holds that programs for the poor are vulnerable to instability and retrenchment. Medicaid, however, has grown into the nation’s largest intergovernmental grant program, accounting for nearly half of all federal funding to state and local governments. Medicaid’s generous open-ended federal matching grants have given governors a powerful incentive to mobilize on behalf of its maintenance and expansion, using methods ranging from lobbying and negotiation to creative financing mechanisms and waivers to maximize federal financial assistance. Perceiving federal retrenchment efforts as a threat to states’ finances, governors, through the powerful National Governors’ Association, have repeatedly worked together in bipartisan fashion to defend the program against cutbacks. Financing Medicaidengagingly intertwines theory, historical narrative, and case studies, drawing on sources including archival materials from the National Governors’ Association and gubernatorial and presidential libraries, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data, the Congressional Record, and interviews.