Health care is America's most talked about and controversial issue at the end of the 20th century. No domestic problem has engaged so many persons, from thousands without medical insurance to individuals fed up with real or imagined mistreatment in managed care.
Health Care Policy and Politics A to Z is the new ready-reference guide in the acclaimed A to Z series. Written by an expert Washington journalist, it brings clarity and understanding to one of the most contentious and important public policy issues in America.
National health care policy has been controversial from the days that it was excluded from Social Security coverage at the birth of that program, through President Truman's failed attempt to create a universal health care program, to President Clinton's disastrous bungled attempt to devise a new system as the centerpiece of his domestic agenda in 1993. The specifics of the debate have changed over more than half a century, but the basics have not.
What is managed care and why is it so controversial? What are the roots of the abortion controversy? What is a cafeteria benefits plan, capitation, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and portability? How do Medicare and Medicaid work, and what is the difference between them? These and hundreds of other questions, terms, and concepts - almost 300 in all - are discussed in layman's language by Julie Rovner, a Washington-based reporter specializing in health care issues for many years.
Readers will turn to this book to understand the continuing national debate about how Americans should receive health care and who should pay for it. No other ready-reference volume for consumers, students, and researchers gives such breadth of analysis to this issue.
Readers familiar with CQ's A^-Z approach will be comfortable with this volume, which covers
Abortion to
Zidovudin. In addition to telling the difference between a
gag clause (by which managed-care plans limit what doctors can tell their patients about treatment options) and a
gag rule (a name applied to regulations that bar abortion counseling and referrals in federally funded family planning facilities), the book gives overviews of the AIDS crisis and the evolution of the office of Surgeon General, describes the Tuskegee experiments, and defines numerous acronyms that pepper anything written about health policy in the U.S.
The entries are simply written, which allows the target audience of laypeople to understand the jargon used in debating health policy issues and to appreciate the history and conflict of the issues themselves. The author, a health-care reporter for CQ Weekly Report, the Medical News Network, National Journal's CongressDaily, and NPR, attributes her "Congress centric" approach to the fact that Congress is where health policy is made.
One appendix lists "Congressional Committees Responsible for Health Care Policy"; another lists organizations (government agencies, foundations, interest groups, etc.) that can provide further information. In addition to the alphabetical table of contents, there is an index that leads readers to multiple related entries.
Although there is nothing here that could not be found elsewhere, the consistent writing, convenience of having all the information in one place, and accessible arrangement make this a recommended purchase for most high-school and public libraries and some medical libraries.
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