Essential reading for every American who must navigate the US health care system. Why was the Obama health plan so controversial and difficult to understand? In this readable, entertaining, and substantive book, Stuart Altman—internationally recognized expert in health policy and adviser to five US presidents—and fellow health care specialist David Shactman explain not only the Obama health plan but also many of the intriguing stories in the hundred-year saga leading up to the landmark 2010 legislation. Blending political intrigue, policy substance, and good old-fashioned storytelling, this is the first book to place the Obama health plan within a historical perspective. The authors describe the sometimes haphazard, piece-by-piece construction of the nation’s health care system, from the early efforts of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to the later additions of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. In each case, they examine the factors that led to success or failure, often by illuminating little-known political maneuvers that brought about immense shifts in policy or thwarted herculean efforts at reform. The authors look at key moments in health care history: the Hill–Burton Act in 1946, in which one determined poverty lawyer secured the rights of the uninsured poor to get hospital care; the "three-layer cake" strategy of powerful House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills to enact Medicare and Medicaid under Lyndon Johnson in 1965; the odd story of how Medicare catastrophic insurance was passed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and then repealed because of public anger in 1989; and the fact that the largest and most expensive expansion of Medicare was enacted by George W. Bush in 2003. President Barack Obama is the protagonist in the climactic chapter, learning from the successes and failures chronicled throughout the narrative. The authors relate how, in the midst of a worldwide financial meltdown, Obama overcame seemingly impossible obstacles to accomplish what other presidents had tried and failed to achieve for nearly one hundred years.

With the Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010, the United States seemed closer than ever to achieving universal health care. However, repealing the act has been a key goal for the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, with the main arguments against it including the higher premiums for middle-class Americans and the abuse of government power through its control of the insurance industry. This volume helps define universal health care, explains the arguments for and against it, and discusses attempts to implement it on an international scale.

Universal health care was on the national political agenda for nearly a hundred years until a comprehensive (but not universal) health care reform bill supported by President Obama passed in 2010. The most common explanation for the failure of past reform efforts is that special interests were continually able to block reform by lobbying lawmakers. Yet, beginning in the 1970s, accelerating with the failure of the Clinton health care plan, and continuing through the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, health policy reform was alive and well at the state level. Interest Groups and Health Care Reform across the United States assesses the impact of interest groups to determine if collectively they are capable of shaping policy in their own interests or whether they influence policy only at the margins. What can this tell us about the true power of interest groups in this policy arena? The fact that state governments took action in health policy in spite of opposing interests, where the national government could not, offers a compelling puzzle that will be of special interest to scholars and students of public policy, health policy, and state politics.

In 2015, building on the advances of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals that include an explicit commitment to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. However, enormous gaps remain between what is achievable in human health and where global health stands today, and progress has been both incomplete and unevenly distributed. In order to meet this goal, a deliberate and comprehensive effort is needed to improve the quality of health care services globally. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Health Care Worldwide focuses on one particular shortfall in health care affecting global populations: defects in the quality of care. This study reviews the available evidence on the quality of care worldwide and makes recommendations to improve health care quality globally while expanding access to preventive and therapeutic services, with a focus in low-resource areas. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm emphasizes the organization and delivery of safe and effective care at the patient/provider interface. This study explores issues of access to services and commodities, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, and equity. Focusing on front line service delivery that can directly impact health outcomes for individuals and populations, this book will be an essential guide for key stakeholders, governments, donors, health systems, and others involved in health care.

This book describes and evaluates power and influence in the creation, administration, and distribution of health care in the United States. His work is uniquely concerned with distributive justice as well as power. Who ought to receive more (or less) health care? How should we decide these distributions? Such questions are addressed in works of philosophy with little attention to political, legal, and economic analysis of budget dilemmas, professional and industrial politics, and technology. This volume takes the issue a step further by placing health policy issues in the broader context of American politics, illuminating the conflict between health resources and other needs, and evaluating the trade offs.

A lively, clear explanation of the American healthcare reform movement from a noted expert—giving women the tools they need to demand fair and affordable coverage for all people Healthcare is one of America’s most dysfunctional and confusing industries, and women bear the brunt of the problem when it comes to both access and treatment. Women, who make 80 percent of healthcare decisions for their families, are disproportionately impacted by the complex nature of our healthcare system—but are also uniquely poised to fix it. Founder and CEO of Day Health Strategies Rosemarie Day wants women to recognize their trouble with accessing affordable care as part of a national emergency. Day encourages women throughout the country to share their stories and get involved, and she illustrates how a groundswell of activism, led by everyday women, could create the incentives our political leaders need to change course. Marching Toward Coverage gives women the clear information they need to move this agenda forward by breaking down complicated topics in an accessible manner, like the ACA (Affordable Care Act), preexisting conditions, and employer-sponsored plans. With more than 25 years working in healthcare strategy and related fields, Day helps the average American understand the business of national health reform and lays out a pragmatic path forward, one that recognizes healthcare as a fundamental human right.

At a time when the world’s wealthiest nations struggle to make health care and medicine available to everyone, why do resource-constrained countries make costly commitments to universal health coverage and AIDS treatment after transitioning to democracy? Joseph Harris explores the dynamics that made landmark policies possible in Thailand and Brazil but which have led to prolonged struggle and contestation in South Africa. Drawing on firsthand accounts of the people wrestling with these issues, Achieving Access documents efforts to institutionalize universal healthcare and expand access to life-saving medicines in three major industrializing countries. In comparing two separate but related policy areas, Harris finds that democratization empowers elite professionals, such as doctors and lawyers, to advocate for universal health care and treatment for AIDS. Harris’s analysis is situated at the intersection of sociology, political science, and public health and will speak to scholars with interests in health policy, comparative politics, social policy, and democracy in the developing world. In light of the growing interest in health insurance generated by implementation of the Affordable Care Act (as well as the coming changes poised to be made to it), Achieving Access will also be useful to policymakers in developing countries and officials working on health policy in the United States.