Adds to the debate on priority setting by looking at experience from other countries.

Health care rationing is a reality in much of the world, and priority setting is an issue of increasing importance. Choices about the use of health care budgets are inescapable and difficult. This study look at priority setting in the health services of several countries.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act is a sweeping reform to the US health care system. Hoffman offers an engaging and in-depth look at America's long tradition of unequal access to health care. She argues that two main features have characterized the US health system: a refusal to adopt a right to care and a particularly American type of rationing. Unlike rationing in most countries, which is intended to keep costs down, rationing in the United States has actually led to increased costs, resulting in the most expensive health care system in the world.

Following the Governments health reforms in 1991 rationing has been put firmly on the agenda. This book identifies and clarifies the numerous political and ethical issues surrounding rationing in healthcare. Drawing upon international examples it offers a critical overview of the approaches to rationing and makes practical proposals for its management. Desperately Seeking Solutions challenges the assumption that all health services are inherently subject to rationing as demand invariably outstrips supply and examines this within a comparative framework. The author critically evaluates the extent to which rationing has always existed and should exist within the NHS, although until recently it operated on an implicit rather than explicit basis and was bound up with clinical judgements rather than purely financial considerations. The author questions whether calls for explicit rationing are actually desirable and potentially feasible.

Healthcare regulations should guarantee that everybody has access to appropriate healthcare. The main goals for healthcare are: Equal access to health care for everyone; Cost-efficient production of health services and Cost-control of public expenditure for medical services. Especially cost-control seems to be a global problem. One of the key issues in the debate on how to improve healthcare is rationing. It is an important challenge to understand the various methods of rationing in medical care, to analyse the effects of rationing and the ways to harmonize the various rationing cultures in Europe. This publication gives a comprehensive overview of the perception of different population groups in an international context and it shows how the different population and occupational groups estimate the possibilities, forms and also limits rationing in the near future. Patients who are affected by rationing decisions could ask for treatment in foreign European countries. In order to limit social inequities caused by capacity problems in less rationed countries it is important in a first step to demonstrate the differences in rationing procedures between European countries.

"Examines the use of rationing as a means to curb health care spending, using the experience of Great Britain to highlight the promises and pitfalls of this approach"--Provided by publisher.