American Health Crisis

American Health Crisis PDF

Author: Martin Halliwell

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2021-05-18

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 0520379403

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A history of U.S. public health emergencies and how we can turn the tide. Despite enormous advances in medical science and public health education over the last century, access to health care remains a dominant issue in American life. U.S. health care is often hailed as the best in the world, yet the public health emergencies of today often echo the public health emergencies of yesterday: consider the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918–19 and COVID-19, the displacement of the Dust Bowl and the havoc of Hurricane Maria, the Reagan administration’s antipathy toward the AIDS epidemic and the lack of accountability during the water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Spanning the period from the presidency of Woodrow Wilson to that of Donald Trump, American Health Crisis illuminates how—despite the elevation of health care as a human right throughout the world—vulnerable communities in the United States continue to be victimized by structural inequalities across disparate geographies, income levels, and ethnic groups. Martin Halliwell views contemporary public health crises through the lens of historical and cultural revisionings, suturing individual events together into a narrative of calamity that has brought us to our current crisis in health politics. American Health Crisis considers the future of public health in the United States and, presenting a reinvigorated concept of health citizenship, argues that now is the moment to act for lasting change.

America's Health Care Crisis Solved

America's Health Care Crisis Solved PDF

Author: J. Patrick Rooney

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2008-07-25

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 047033441X

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America’s Health Care Crisis Solved highlights the major pitfalls of our current health care system and shows why, without changes, health care costs will soon demolish the American economy as well as the opportunity to receive quality care. However, contrary to the increasingly popular idea of a government health plan, the alternative presented by authors J. Patrick Rooney and Dan Perrin brings the self-interest of you, the American consumer, into the equation.

Access to Health Care in America

Access to Health Care in America PDF

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1993-02-01

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 0309047420

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Americans are accustomed to anecdotal evidence of the health care crisis. Yet, personal or local stories do not provide a comprehensive nationwide picture of our access to health care. Now, this book offers the long-awaited health equivalent of national economic indicators. This useful volume defines a set of national objectives and identifies indicatorsâ€"measures of utilization and outcomeâ€"that can "sense" when and where problems occur in accessing specific health care services. Using the indicators, the committee presents significant conclusions about the situation today, examining the relationships between access to care and factors such as income, race, ethnic origin, and location. The committee offers recommendations to federal, state, and local agencies for improving data collection and monitoring. This highly readable and well-organized volume will be essential for policymakers, public health officials, insurance companies, hospitals, physicians and nurses, and interested individuals.

An American Sickness

An American Sickness PDF

Author: Elisabeth Rosenthal

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2017-04-11

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0698407180

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A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

America's Uninsured Crisis

America's Uninsured Crisis PDF

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2009-07-01

Total Pages: 238

ISBN-13: 0309140889

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When policy makers and researchers consider potential solutions to the crisis of uninsurance in the United States, the question of whether health insurance matters to health is often an issue. This question is far more than an academic concern. It is crucial that U.S. health care policy be informed with current and valid evidence on the consequences of uninsurance for health care and health outcomes, especially for the 45.7 million individuals without health insurance. From 2001 to 2004, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) issued six reports, which concluded that being uninsured was hazardous to people's health and recommended that the nation move quickly to implement a strategy to achieve health insurance coverage for all. The goal of this book is to inform the health reform policy debateâ€"in 2009â€"with an up-to-date assessment of the research evidence. This report addresses three key questions: What are the dynamics driving downward trends in health insurance coverage? Is being uninsured harmful to the health of children and adults? Are insured people affected by high rates of uninsurance in their communities?

The Long Fix

The Long Fix PDF

Author: Vivian Lee

Publisher: National Geographic Books

Published: 2021-08-17

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 0393867447

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It may not be a quick fix, but this concrete action plan for reform can create a less costly and healthier system for all. Beyond the outrageous expense, the quality of care varies wildly, and millions of Americans can’t get care when they need it. This is bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for business. In The Long Fix, physician and health care CEO Vivian S. Lee, MD, cuts to the heart of the health care crisis. The problem with the way medicine is practiced, she explains, is not so much who’s paying, it’s what we are paying for. Insurers, employers, the government, and individuals pay for every procedure, prescription, and lab test, whether or not it makes us better—and that is both backward and dangerous. Dr. Lee proposes turning the way we receive care completely inside out. When doctors, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies are paid to keep people healthy, care improves and costs decrease. Lee shares inspiring examples of how this has been done, from physicians’ practices that prioritize preventative care, to hospitals that adapt lessons from manufacturing plants to make them safer, to health care organizations that share online how much care costs and how well each physician is caring for patients. Using clear and compelling language, Dr. Lee paints a picture that is both realistic and optimistic. It may not be a quick fix, but her concrete action plan for reform—for employers and other payers, patients, clinicians, and policy makers—can reinvent health care, and create a less costly, more efficient, and healthier system for all.

Patient Power

Patient Power PDF

Author: John C. Goodman

Publisher: Cato Institute

Published: 1992-10-01

Total Pages: 699

ISBN-13: 1937184269

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Argues for a health care system that would restore power and responsibility to the individual consumer and taking it out of the hands of government and insurance companies

The Maternal Health Crisis in America

The Maternal Health Crisis in America PDF

Author: Barbara A. Anderson, DrPH, CNM, FACNM, FAAN

Publisher: Springer Publishing Company

Published: 2019-04-26

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 082614084X

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Describes how nursing professionals can mitigate the maternal health crisis through advocacy and improved practice. This graduate-level nursing text and professional clinical reference is the first to comprehensively address the escalating crisis in U.S. maternal health—our country experiences the highest maternal mortality among developed nations—and provides strategies and roadmaps for improved outcomes. It challenges the current approach to ameliorating the maternal crisis, which embeds maternal care into “child health” and ”women’s health,” and characterizes maternal health as a distinct, contemporary epidemiological crisis in America. At its heart, the book calls for the application of nursing knowledge and skill in advocating for and changing practices. The text examines the social determinants responsible for the crisis, including structural and systemic economic and political forces, declining accessibility to maternal care, and lack of a national effort to improve maternal health. With a strong public focus, the book engages readers through narratives and interactive critical thinking exercises in analyzing the problem and related structural and systemic barriers. It offers guidelines for advocacy and improved practice while fostering creative thinking by which readers can imagine their own solutions. Specific issues addressed include the current status of health care delivery, the public health safety net, practice-policy initiatives, specific sociocultural factors contributing to enhanced risk, myths and impugning attitudes about childbearing women, the life-long impact of maternal health neglect, and the contribution of nursing to advocacy, prevention, and improved practice. Key Features: Synthesizes key data on the maternal health crisis in America focusing on nursing leadership and contributions Underscores the need for a collaborative public health nursing perspective in addressing the maternal health crisis Examines social determinants responsible for the crisis Presents exercises and narratives for advocacy and improved practice Spotlights maternal health as a specific entity Includes learning objectives, expert opinions, key questions to guide critical thinking, brief summary, and references in each chapter

The Price We Pay

The Price We Pay PDF

Author: Marty Makary

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2019-09-10

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1635574129

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New York Times bestseller Business Book of the Year--Association of Business Journalists From the New York Times bestselling author comes an eye-opening, urgent look at America's broken health care system--and the people who are saving it--now with a new Afterword by the author. "A must-read for every American." --Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, FORBES One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of the business of medicine and its elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable. The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

Confronting America's Health Care Crisis

Confronting America's Health Care Crisis PDF

Author: Anne Boston Parish

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1434360164

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47 million people in America do not have health insurance. Why though America is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, do so many Americans not receive health care and why can't all Americans afford medical insurance? Who are the medically uninsured and how do you build a community clinic without the funding of local, state or federal governments?