Financing Health Care: Volume I & II

Financing Health Care is an indispensable guide to the health care reforms now underway in many industrialised countries, as technological advances and demographic changes cause the gap between the demand for health services and available funding to widen.
Financing Health Care contains a comprehensive discussion of the health care systems and reforms in twelve developed countries and includes projections of the growing gap between demand for health care and the level of the available funds. The book also derives a model health care system which demonstrates how countries can increase the efficiency with which health care is provided while ensuring that every citizen has access to health care. A glossary describes the health care institutions of the countries surveyed.
The book analyses the health care systems of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom and the United States, and discusses the role of the European Union in health policy. A separate chapter is dedicated to each system, and a consistent format allows simple comparison across countries. Each chapter contains:

• A detailed description of the existing health care system which analyses the role of each participant and the economic incentives that influence their behavior, and examines how these incentives interact and sometimes conflict to lead to distortions in the health care system.
• A discussion of reform policies currently being debated, or introduced in each country; and recommendations for new health care reforms which will facilitate consistent movement to the proposed health care model.

The comprehensive country studies and statistical annexes make Financing Health Care an invaluable reference source for students of international health care.

` ... offers sensible proposals to deal with a policy challenge that cannot be ducked. '
Financial Times

` ... provides useful comparisons for countries currently trying to reform their systems of health care. '
British Medical Journal

` ... one of the most comprehensive comparative studies of national health care systems to date. '
Wall Street Journal Europe