Improving Healthcare: A Dose of Competition (Developments in Health Economics and Public Policy, 9)

Improving Healthcare: A Dose of Competition systematically examines the American health care system from a competition-oriented perspective. The volume surveys the performance of each major sector of the health care system, and identifies impediments to more effective competition. Improving Healthcare examines such issues as competition v. regulation, public and private sector approaches to health care financing, cross-subsidies, licensure, provider market concentration, financial and clinical integration, payment for performance, quality, pharmacy benefit managers, direct-to-consumer advertising of pharmaceuticals, certificates of need, mandates, unionization, the significance of organizational status (nonprofit v. for-profit), and the role of antitrust and consumer protection in health care. It offers concrete recommendations to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of the American health care marketplace.

David Hyman is Professor of Law and Medicine at the University of Illinois. He served as Special Counsel at the Federal Trade Commission for three years, during which he was project leader for the set of hearings that resulted in this book.