Who Shall Live?: Health, Economics, and Social Choice - Softcover

Fuchs, Victor R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465091873 ISBN 13: 9780465091874

Publisher: Basic Books, 1983

Synopsis

Examines the problem of soaring medical costs, discusses the future role of the physician, hospital, and new drugs, and looks at how medical care will be funded

About this title

Review

Every doctor, policy maker, and concerned citizen should listen as Fuchs explains the keys to getting physicians to make cost-effective decisions, the only promising way to control health-care costs. They should listen again as he identifies the drastic shifts over 40 years in how Americans pay for care, and then explains why that shift to bigger payers with much more bargaining power has failed to restrain costs. Finally, they should ponder the reform plan he presents here, developed with Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, after distilling wisdom from dozens of experts in a multi-year project. If great clarity, practical insights, and relevant data on health care are what you want, Vic Fuchs' Who Shall Live? is for you. --Richard Zeckhauser, Frank P Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Kennedy School, Harvard University

Who Shall Live? is deservedly a classic book. I assign it as the only reading for the first class of the year in a health policy survey course because, except for the magnitude of the numbers, its analysis, accessibility, and lucidity of exposition are as fresh as four decades ago. And for the great many who have read the book at least once, there is a spiffy new introduction that gives Fuchs' reflections on the events of the intervening years, including the health reform legislation of 2010. --Professor Joseph P Newhouse, Harvard School of Public Health and founding and current editor, Journal of Health Economics

Victor Fuchs is the most perspicacious, prolific, influential and durable of the small cadre of economists who founded the field of health economics. Who Shall Live? created something of a sensation when it was first published. Its messages resonate today, and it behooves anyone seriously interested in health and health care to devour its wisdom. Prof Fuchs continues to offer new ideas, filled with insight, that demand attention from America's health care policy makers. His analysis of health reform and his comprehensive cure should be required reading for every state and federal legislator, and for every citizen who cares about the future of our country. --Kenneth E Warner, Avedis Donabedian Distinguished University Professor of Public Health, University of Michigan

From the Inside Flap

Since the first edition of Who Shall Live? (1974) over 100,000 students, teachers, physicians, and general readers from more than a dozen fields have found this book to be a reader-friendly, authoritative introduction to economic concepts applied to health and medical care. Fuchs provides clear explanations and memorable examples of the importance of the non-medical determinants of health, the dominant role of physicians in health care expenditures, the necessity of choices about health at the individual and societal levels, and many other compelling themes.

Now, in a new introduction of some 8,000 words including new tables and figures, Fuchs, often called the "Dean of health economists," concisely summarizes the major changes of the past 37 years in health, medical care, and health policy. He focuses primarily on the United States but includes remarks about health policy in other countries, and addresses the question of whether national health care systems are becoming more alike. In addition to reviewing changes, the introduction explains why health expenditures grow so rapidly, why health spending in the United States is so much greater than in other countries, and what physicians need in order to practice cost-effective medicine.

This second expanded edition also includes recent papers by Fuchs on the economics of aging, the socio-economic correlates of health, the future of health economics, and his policy recommendations for the United States to secure universal coverage, control of costs, and improvement in the quality of care. As was true of the first expanded edition (1998), this book will be welcomed by current students and life-long learners in economics, other social and behavioral sciences, medicine, public health, law, business, public policy, and other fields who want to understand the relation between health, economics, and social choice.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1983
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465091873
• ISBN 13: 9780465091874
• Binding: Paperback