New thinking about the management of public health services has stimulated a widespread movement for health sector reform across the world. This book examines the feasibility and desirability of common reforms in low income countries, based on in-depth case studies in Ghana, Zimbabwe, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand, and asks whether governments possess or can develop the capacities needed for these new and often complex roles. The book challenges conventional reform wisdom, and argues that reform approaches are needed that are more sensitive to the institutional characteristics of individual countries.

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

This book provides a multi-disciplinary framework for developing and analyzing health sector reforms, based on the authors' extensive international experience. It offers practical guidance - useful to policymakers, consultants, academics, and students alike - and stresses the need to take account of each country's economic, administrative, and political circumstances. The authors explain how to design effective government interventions in five areas - financing, payment, organization, regulation, and behavior - to improve the performance and equity of health systems around the world.

In Mexico City or Nairobi or Manila, a young girl in one part of the city is near death with measles, while, not far away, an elderly man awaits transplantation of a new kidney. How is one denied a cheap, simple, and effective remedy while another can command the most advanced technology medicine can offer? Can countries like Mexico, Kenya, or the Philippines, with limited funds and medical resources, find an affordable, effective, and fair way to balance competing health needs and demands? Such dilemmas are the focus of this insightful book in which leading international researchers bring together the latest thinking on how developing countries can reform health care. The choices these poorer countries make today will determine the pace of health improvement for vast numbers of people now and in the future. Exploring new ideas and concepts, as well as the practical experiences of nations in all parts of the world, this volume provides valuable insights and information to both generalists and specialists interested in how health care will look in the world of the twenty-first century.

This volume provides a comprehensive review of China's healthcare system and policy reforms in the context of the global economy. Following a value-chain framework, the 16 chapters cover the payers, the providers, and the producers (manufacturers) in China's system. It also provides a detailed analysis of the historical development of China's healthcare system, the current state of its broad reforms, and the uneasy balance between China's market-driven approach and governmental regulation. Most importantly, it devotes considerable attention to the major problems confronting China, including chronic illness, public health, and long-term care and economic security for the elderly. Burns and Liu have assembled the latest research from leading health economists and political scientists, as well as senior public health officials and corporate executives, making this book an essential read for industry professionals, policymakers, researchers, and students studying comparative health systems across the world.

This book offers a global perspective on healthcare reform and its relationship with efforts to improve quality and safety. It looks at the ways reforms have developed in 30 countries, and specifically the impact national reform initiatives have had on the quality and safety of care. It explores how reforms drive quality and safety improvement, and equally how they act to negate such goals. Every country included in this book is involved in a reform and improvement process, but each takes place in a particular social, cultural, economic and developmental context, leading to differing emphases and varied progress. Methods for tackling common problems - financing, efficiencies, effectiveness, evidence-based practice, institutional reforms, quality improvement, and patient safety initiatives - also differ. Representatives from each nation provide a chapter to convey their own situation. The editors draw a conclusion from these numerous contributions and synthesize the themes emerging into a coherent ‘lessons learned’ summary that delivers value to the numerous stakeholders. Healthcare Reform, Quality and Safety forms a compendium of the current ‘state of the art’ in global healthcare reform. This is the first book of its type, and offers a unique opportunity for cross-fertilization of ideas to the mutual benefit of countries involved in the project. The content will be of interest to governments, policymakers, managers and leaders, clinicians, teaching academics, researchers and students.

This book presents the health reform experiences over the past three decades of twelve small and medium-sized nations that are not often included in international comparative studies in this field. The major conclusion of the study is that despite many similarities in policy goals, policy challenges and in the menu of policy options for countries that seek to offer universal coverage to their population, the health reforms of the nations in this book did not converge into one direction or model. However, we found several widespread policy experiences that are relevant for others, too.For example, user fees are unpopular everywhere. Governments often try to soften the consequences by exempting large groups of users, thus largely defeating the very purpose of those fees.As a second example, the introduction of new payment modes for medical care — like the shift from fee for service to case-based payment — took much longer than originally expected everywhere, and also failed to deliver their promises of improved transparency or efficiency gains A third example is that proposals are for universal coverage often ignore the challenges of implementing new financing models that elsewhere took decades if not centuries to develop.The conclusions contain both empirical findings and theoretical conclusions of interest to policy-makers and scholars of international comparison. It is accessible for academics, healthcare managers and students as well as a wider audience of readers interested in the changes in healthcare across the world.

The first book to address the fundamental nexus that binds poverty and income inequality to soaring health care utilization and spending, Poverty and the Myths of Health Care Reform is a must-read for medical professionals, public health scholars, politicians, and anyone concerned with the heavy burden of inequality on the health of Americans.

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.

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.