A group of respected analysts of health issues considers the economic forces impacting the surging health care market and examines the ultimate fairness of an intergenerational contract dictating that tomorrow's workers foot the bill for today's elderly."--BOOK JACKET. "Written for the general reader and offering innovative ideas for policy revision along with critical new data on health care economics, this comprehensive volume provides a timely and thoughtful deliberation on the precarious future of Medicare."--BOOK JACKET.

"A graphic explanation of the PPACA act"--Provided by publisher.

Today, employed physicians and independent physicians alike feel powerless. Hospital-employed doctors feel like cogs in a machine, and community doctors are increasingly threatened by forces beyond their control. Physician-led healthcare reform would give them back a large measure of control and pride in their work. The Medicare for All debate has mostly focused on how the U.S. should finance healthcare. This book, directed to physicians, healthcare administrators, health policy experts, politicians, and consumers, explains why the U.S. healthcare delivery system must be restructured to lower costs--and how to do it. Unless we can get doctors to change how they practice, Medicare for All will struggle with the same cost pressures that have made our system the most expensive in the world. The biggest problems of physicians--both employed and independent--are a loss of professional autonomy, overwhelming administrative requirements, and the conflict between business and patient care imperatives. From the Foreword "With this manual, leaders of health systems and medical groups can achieve these goals and align their physicians, management, care teams, payers, and patients to deliver exceptional care that will improve quality while lowering costs, resulting in better care, better patient experience, and more affordable health care." This book, at this critical time, offers a comprehensive argument in favor of physician-led reform. Table of Contents Chapter 1 - Medicare for All Lives Chapter 2 - Obamacare: A Work in Progress Chapter 3 - Industry Consolidation on Steriods Chapter 4 - Primary Care on The Ropes Chapter 5 - Waste Not, Want Not Chapter 6 - Population Health Management Chapter 7 - Addressing Social Determinants of Health Chapter 8 - Physician-led Healthcare Reform Chapter 9 - Building the New Delivery System Chapter 10 - Taking Advantage of Health IT Chapter 11 - The Payoff Chapter 12 - Drugs and the Technology Challenge Final Thoughts

Everyone agrees on the need to reform Medicare but not on how to do it. Some argue the program is too comprehensive, others that it is not comprehensive enough. Some suggest it pays too much for health care, others, too little. Meanwhile, the financial stakes continue to mount. Medicare spending exceeded $400 billion in 2007, making it more expensive than the entire health systems of most other nations, as well as the largest national public program other than Social Security and national defense. In R eforming Medicare, Henry J. Aaron and Jeanne M. Lambrew deftly guide readers through this complex debate. They identify and analyze the three leading approaches to reform. Updated social insurance would retain the current system while rationalizing coverage and reducing bureaucracy. Premium support would replace the current system with a capped, per-person payment that beneficiaries could use to buy health insurance. Consumer-directed Medicare would have beneficiaries pay for care up to a high deductible from government- supported savings accounts and offer premium-support coverage above the deductible. In addition to rating each option on its ability to promote access to health care, improve the quality of care, and control costs, the authors evaluate each reform's political strengths and weaknesses. Given the heat generated by the Medicare debate, it is unlikely that any single approach will be implemented in full. Consequently, Aaron and Lambrew describe incremental strategies that blend elements of each plan. Their analysis provides essential insight into the types of hybrid policies that Congress will consider in coming years.

When the Supreme Court's majority ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius upheld the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (the PPACA, or Obamacare), it was clear that this major shift in American health care provision was here to stay. For better or worse, the PPACA is now both a target for, and a constraint on, the next wave of reformist ideas. Driven by curiosity about how the American health care regime will continue to evolve in the near and medium term, Dean Michael Schill and Professor Anup Malani of the University of Chicago Law School commissioned fourteen essays from leading scholars of law, economics, medicine, and public health that offer predictions for the most important issues and debates in health-care reform over the next five to seven years. Essays are arranged in five sections. Part I, ACA and the Law, sets the stage with three essays on legal challenges and justifications for the Act. Part II, ACA and the Federal Budget, explores the variety of potential fiscal consequences resulting from Obamacare. Part III, ACA and Health Care Delivery, offers competing viewpoints on what the Act will ultimately mean for consumers of health care. Part IV, Health Care Costs, Innovation, and the ACA speculates about what the altered financial structure of health care will mean for the pace of development of new medical technologies. Part V, ACA and Health Insurance Markets, concludes the volume with a pair of contrasting assessments of the prospects for the new insurance "exchange" markets.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) administers two programs that provide benefits based on disability: the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program and the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program. This report analyzes health care utilizations as they relate to impairment severity and SSA's definition of disability. Health Care Utilization as a Proxy in Disability Determination identifies types of utilizations that might be good proxies for "listing-level" severity; that is, what represents an impairment, or combination of impairments, that are severe enough to prevent a person from doing any gainful activity, regardless of age, education, or work experience.

In no other country has health care served as such a volatile flashpoint of ideological conflict. America has endured a century of rancorous debate on health insurance, and despite the passage of legislation in 2010, the battle is not yet over. This book is a history of how and why the United States became so stubbornly different in health care, presented by an expert with unsurpassed knowledge of the issues. Tracing health-care reform from its beginnings to its current uncertain prospects, Paul Starr argues that the United States ensnared itself in a trap through policies that satisfied enough of the public and so enriched the health-care industry as to make the system difficult to change. He reveals the inside story of the rise and fall of the Clinton health plan in the early 1990sùand of the Gingrich counterrevolution that followed. And he explains the curious tale of how Mitt RomneyÆs reforms in Massachusetts became a model for Democrats and then follows both the passage of those reforms under Obama and the explosive reaction they elicited from conservatives. Writing concisely and with an even hand, the author offers exactly what is needed as the debate continuesùa penetrating account of how health care became such treacherous terrain in American politics.