Synopses & Reviews
Foreword by Harvey V. Fineberg, President of the Institute of MedicineFor decades, experts have puzzled over why the US spends more on health care but suffers poorer outcomes than other industrialized nations. Now Elizabeth H. Bradley and Lauren A. Taylor marshal extensive research, including a comparative study of health care data from thirty countries, and get to the root of this paradox: Weand#8217;ve left out of our tally the most impactful expenditures countries make to improve the health of their populationsand#151;investments in social services.
In The American Health Care Paradox, Bradley and Taylor illuminate how narrow definitions of and#147;health care,and#8221; archaic divisions in the distribution of health and social services, and our allergy to government programs combine to create needless suffering in individual lives, even as health care spending continues to soar. They show us how and why the US health care and#147;systemand#8221; developed as it did; examine the constraints on, and possibilities for, reform; and profile inspiring new initiatives from around the world.
Offering a unique and clarifying perspective on the problems the Affordable Care Act wonand#8217;t solve, this book also points a new way forward.
About the Author
Elizabeth H. Bradley is professor of public health at Yale University, faculty director of its Global Health Leadership Institute, and master at Branford College. The recipient of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation grant, she was previously director of the health management program and co-director of the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program at Yale and served as hospital administrator at Massachusetts General Hospital. She lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
Lauren A. Taylor studies public health and medical ethics at Harvard Divinity School, where she is a presidential scholar. She was formerly a program manager at the Yale Global Health Leadership Institute, where she led a research team in building a model for scaling up public health innovations for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She completed a masterand#8217;s in public health at Yale University in 2009. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts.
Table of Contents
C O N T E N T S
A Note on Quotations vii
Foreword by Harvey V. Fineberg ix
Preface xiii
CHAPTER 1 THE PARADOX 1
CHAPTER 2 HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES 21
CHAPTER 3 FRONT-LINE INSIGHTS 49
CHAPTER 4 LEARNING FROM ABROAD 81
CHAPTER 5 HOME-GROWN INNOVATIONS 121
CHAPTER 6 AN AMERICAN WAY FORWARD 151
CHAPTER 7 CONTINUING THE DISCOURSE 181
Appendix A: Interviewees 199
Appendix B: Social Values in Scandinavia and the United States: Similarities
and Differences 203
Appendix C: Accountable Care Organization
(ACO) Performance Measures, 2012 209
Notes 213
Index 237