Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: A Patient-centered Plan for Reforming America's Health Care System - Hardcover

D.P. KESSLER

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0844771783 ISBN 13: 9780844771786

Publisher: Hoover Institution Press, 2005

Synopsis

Offers market-based alternatives to recent US health care reforms that centre on tax changes, insurance market changes, and the redesign of Medicare and Medicaid. It shows that, by promoting cost- conscious behaviour and competition in both private markets and government programmes, we can slow the rate of growth of health care costs, expand access to high-quality health care, and slow down runaway spending.

About this title

Review:

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise clearly explains what we must do to transform health and health care in America. The authors' proposals will undoubtedly improve the quality of health care, insure more Americans, and save billions of dollars. Every policymakerin government and every decision maker in the corporations that pay for so much of America's health care should read this important book-and then act on its recommendations.--Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

Synopsis:

The U.S. health care industry has accomplished amazing advances over the past forty years. Dramatic improvements in technology have expanded the length and improved the quality of life. Survey evidence shows that Americans are remarkably satisfied with the quality of health care that they receive. Yet the U.S. health care system has several well-known problems - high costs of care, high rates of uninsurance, and glaring gaps in the quality and efficiency of care - with major consequences for health care and America's economic well-being. What is the right way to preserve the strengths while addressing the weaknesses of this system? Policymakers, like Americans as a whole, are divided about whether making private markets work better or increasing government involvement is the most appropriate strategy. Supporters of private markets point out that competition and choice provide consumer satisfaction in most markets, so why not health care? Supporters of government's role argue that high costs and imperfect information give government a natural, direct role in health care financing, if not delivery. In Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise, John F. Cogan, R. Glenn Hubbard, and Daniel P.

Kessler argue that the unintended consequences of a handful of public policies are in large part responsible for our system's problems. These policies have something in common - each of them interferes with, or at best fails to promote, the proper functioning of markets. Cogan, Hubbard, and Kessler believe that the first step to improving our health care system must be reform of these policies, and they map out the path to such reforms. Their patient-centered proposal calls for: health care tax reform to reduce the distorting role of third-party payers in the health care system; insurance reform to foster portable health insurance; legal reforms to improve health care access and quality; better provision of information to providers and consumers; and an explicit public goal to reduce medical errors. The path laid out in Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise shows all concerned citizens that the stakes for successful reform are high, but health reform that delivers the highest value for the resources devoted to health care is achievable through incremental market-oriented reform.

About this edition

• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0844771783
• ISBN 13: 9780844771786
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 150