San Antonio College Library

Former Colorado governor Richard D. Lamm and political economist Andy Sharma provide an informed and erudite look at the current state of the American healthcare system. The authors address questions ranging from the impact of the retiring baby boomer generation to what the impending healthcare reforms mean for the nation. Lamm and Sharma also expose the problems existing not only in policy and professional circles but also in public attitudes and...

"As millions of Americans are aware, health care costs continue to increase rapidly. Much of this increase is due to the development of new life-sustaining drugs and procedures, but part of it is a result of the increased monopoly power of physicians, insurance companies, and hospitals, as the health care sector undergoes reorganization and consolidation. There are two tools to limit the growth of monopoly power: government regulation and antitrust...

This issues-based reference work shines a spotlight on health care policy and practice in the United States. Impassioned debates about the best solutions to health care in America have perennially erupted among politicians, scholars of public policy, medical professionals, and the general public. The fight over the Health Care Reform Act of 2010 brought to light a multitude of fears, challenges, obstacles, and passions that often had the effect of...

"The U.S. healthcare system is in critical condition - but this should come as a surprise to no one. Yet until now the solutions proposed have been unworkable, pie-in-the-sky plans that have had little chance of becoming law and even less of succeeding. In Code Red, David Dranove proposes a set of feasible solutions that address access, efficiency, and quality." "Dranove pays special attention to the plight of the uninsured, and proposes a new direction...

Baker argues that the conventional wisdom about the medical malpractice crisis is a myth, and "the real problem is too much medical malpractice, not too much litigation." He contends that research shows that amounts paid for auto liability, workers' compensation, and product liability insurance dwarf the amounts paid for medical malpractice insurance, which represent less than 1 percent of health care costs. Only 3 percent of medical malpractice victims...

With extensive new data, Donald A. Barr illuminates the ways low socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity interact to create and perpetuate health disparities in the United States. This thoroughly updated edition focuses on a new challenge the United States last experienced more than half a century ago: successive years of declining life expectancy. Barr addresses the causes of this decline, including what are commonly referred to as "deaths of despair"--Opiate...

The health care system in the United States has been called the best in the world, but many of its residents cannot afford or do not have access to adequate care. This book explores how socioeconomic status, race, and ethnic make-up affect health disparities; what the wide gulf in care and health outcomes means for the medical community, cultural subsets, and society at large; and how to address the issue effectively. Analyzing the complex web of...