Americans are understandably concerned about the runaway costs of medical care and the fact that one citizen out of seven is without health insurance coverage. Solving these problems is a top priority for the Clinton administration, but as Victor Fuchs shows, the task is enormously complex. In this book Fuchs, America's foremost health economist, provides the reader with the necessary concepts, facts, and analyses to comprehend the complicated issues of health policy. He shows why health care reform that benefits society as a whole will unavoidably burden certain individuals and groups.
Fuchs addresses such central questions as cost containment, managed competition, technology assessment, poverty and health, children's health, and national health insurance. The future of U.S. health policy, he argues, is tightly linked to three basic questions; First, how can we disengage health insurance from employment? Second, how can we tame technological change in health care? And finally how can we cope with the runaway medical costs of an aging society?
As in his earlier writings, Fuchs repeatedly asks interesting and thoughtful questions and presents information and analyses that are important for understanding current health policy issues...[His] wisdom and sagacity shine through at every point. (David Mechanic Health Affairs)
A book on health policy by one of the founders of the field of health economics could hardly be more timely...This book is an example of the important contributions economics can make to the policy debate. (Donald S. Kenkel Journal of Economic Literature)
Victor Fuchs has been a prolific and thorough analyst of health policy in the USA. This book, which brings together a series of updated and revised papers that have been published previously in medical and economics journals, continues this tradition and offers stimulation and intelligence in conceptual, empirical, and policy areas...The Future of Health Policy is written lucidly, in a non-technical way, and offers much stimulation to clinicians and economists alike. Those in government should read it and learn how 'markets' in health care do not really work. (Alan Maynard The Lancet)
Provocative...Victor Fuchs has long been a leading author on health policy...In The Future of Health Policy he provides a scholarly primer on the many and competing proposals for reform. (Steve Heilig San Francisco Chronicle)
