Markets, not politics, are driving health care reform in America today. Inventive entrepreneurs have transformed medicine over the past ten years, and no end to this period of rapid change is in sight. Consumer anxieties over managed care are mounting, and medical costs are again soaring. Meanwhile, the federal government remains mostly on the health policy sidelines, as it has since the collapse of the Clinton administration's campaign for health care reform. This book addresses the changes that the market has wrought- and the challenges this transformation poses for courts and regulators. The law that governs the medical marketplace is an incomplete, overlapping patchwork, conceived mainly without medical care specifically in mind. The ensuing confusion and incoherence are a central theme of this book. Fragmentation of health care lawmaking has foreclosed coordinated, system-wide policy responses, and lack of national consensus on many of the central questions in health care policy has translated into legal contradiction and bitter controversy. Written by leading commentators on American health law and policy, this book examines the widely-perceived failings of managed care and the law's relationship to them. Some of the contributors treat law as a cause of trouble; others emphasize the law's potential and limits as a corrective tool when the market disappoints. The first two chapters present contrasting overviews of how the doctrines and decision-makers that constitute health law work together, for better or worse, to constrain the medical marketplace. The next six chapters address particular market developments and regulatory dilemmas. These include the power of state versus federal government in the health sphere, conflict between insureres and patients and providers over medical need, financial rewards to physicians for frugal practice, the role of antitrust law in the organization of health care provision and financing, the future of public hospitals, and the place of investor-owned versus non-profit institutions. Acknowledging the health sphere's complexities, the authors seek remedies that fit this country's legal, political, and cultural constraints and can contribute to reasoned regulatory goverance. Within limits they believe a measure of rationality is possible.

Arguing that health care should be a human right rather than a commodity, the distinguished contributors to this volume call for a new social covenant establishing a right to a standard of health care consistent with society's level of resources. By linking rights with limits, they offer a framework for seeking national consensus on a cost-conscious standard of universal medical care. The authors identify the policy implications of recognizing and implementing such a right and develop specific criteria to measure the success of health care reform from a human rights perspective. Health Care Reform also offers specific and timely criticism of managed competition and its offspring, the Clinton plan for health care reform. Because health care reform will inevitably be an ongoing process of assessment and revision—especially since managed competition has not been implemented elsewhere—this book will last beyond the moment by providing vital standards to guide the future evolution of the health care system.

Thinking Women and Health Care Reform in Canada explores why health care is a woman's issue and seeks to address gender equity in health services. Written by members of Women and Health Care Reform (WHCR), this collection establishes the importance of including gender in discussions and decisions surrounding health sector reform. In twelve concise chapters, Thinking Women and Health Care Reform in Canada addresses a wide range of issues, including obesity, maternity care, mental health of health care workers, and private health insurance. This thought-provoking collection is an essential read for students and researchers in the fields of women's studies, health sciences, sociology, and nursing, as well as for anyone who is looking for a new picture of health care in Canada.

The authors find that economic growth does not automatically improve health care, and that prioritizing health care as China has done does not necessarily lead to cost efficiency and equity in health care for the whole nation.

In the post-Cold War, post financial crisis era, health care is an issue of critical political, personal and economic concern. In the US, plans to address a troubled health care model were met by vocal opposition. In the UK and post-communist Europe, attempts to introduce aspects of that model have resulted in controversy and violent protests, while China and Russia have recently backpedalled on marketising reforms. This innovative book provides a timely analysis addressing the many dimensions of radical health care change. Bringing together three major geopolitical regions with strikingly different recent histories, this international cast of contributors, examines reform in US, China and Europe within a single study frame. They look at the processes that have been involved when countries with such diverse starting points try to move towards a globally shared health care framework. An underlying theme running through the chapters is access to care, and how it is shaped by moral economies, by what can be said and known, and by political and economic power. Health Care Reform and Globalisation confronts the interpretations and experiences of patients, professionals, and politicians of health care transformation in practice. It will be of interest to scholars from a range of diverse disciplinary backgrounds, including public health, anthropology, area studies, sociology, politics, social policy, geography and economics.

Sweeping changes are being proposed as Canadians examine our health care system. But what are the legal implications of health care reform? In this timely collection, lawyers and legal scholars discuss a variety of topics in health care reform, including regulation of private care, interpretation of the Canada Health Act, and the constitutional implications of proposed reforms. Barbara von Tigerstrom is currently studying at the University of Cambridge in England. Timothy Caulfield lives in Edmonton, where he teaches at the University of Alberta.

This volume examines the two models of health care reform - managed competition and internal markets - that are increasingly becoming the dominant paradigm in European and North American policy.

This innovative book provides a timely analysis addressing radical health care change in the context of post-Cold War, post financial crisis era, globalisation.

Health care reforms around the world—from Europe and North America to Africa, Latin America and Asia—seem to all be market-oriented reforms driven by international business interests and right wing political parties. There seems to be a sudden and broad concern with the efficiency of medical care, with the assertion that democratically or professionally run systems are inherently inefficient. Far less concern is evident for the more traditional values held regarding medical care, effectiveness (or quality) and equity. The fact is that we have little good cross-national research that systematically addresses the reform issue. This book addresses that problem, and attempts to look at health care reforms in a number of countries, representing as wide a spectrum as possible, and using a common conceptual framework that allows for comparable information to be gathered and presented on each, despite differing levels of socio-economic development. The authors agreed on a set of models that were thought to provide reasonable guidance in answering the questions of the source of pressures for reform, the alternative modes of organization that have been found in the world in recent years, and the direction of change among those alternatives.

This book begins with the international context for health care reform and then moves from coast to coast, setting out what is known about the reforms in health care privatization that are underway and about their impact on women.