The Future of Health Policy

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 fully 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. Comparing the U.S. health care system with those of other nations, he shows, for instance, that the Canadian system works far better for Canadians than the American system works for Americans. Yet he cautions against thinking that the United States could easily adopt the Canadian system, given its very different social and political underpinnings. The future of U.S. health policy, Fuchs argues, is tightly linked to three basic questions. First, how can we disengage health insurance from employment? Second, how can we tame, but not destroy, technologic change in health care? And finally, how can we cope with the runaway medical costs of an aging society? In a striking passage, he writes that as financial and ethical pressures mount, we will probably see the right to death with dignity transformed into an expectation and eventually into an obligation. For anyone who wants a reliable guide through the myriad proposals on health care reform, this book is must reading.