This volume contains papers dealing with macro-level system issues and micro-level issues involving provision of health care as related to major health problems or population health concerns. In the first chapter, the topic of population health is reviewed and examined, looking at relationships between social structure, including socioeconomic status, and health. A number of papers examine social, demographic and structural problems, and a wide variety of major health problems including chronic illnesses, mental illness, serious acute health problems, and disabilities that require health care. Some of the specific health problems covered include major chronic health problems such as coronary heart diseases and arthritis, as well as HIV/AIDs and other sexually transmitted diseases, obesity and how to deal with obesity, mental health concerns, poverty, homelessness and health care problems with a focus on urban contexts within the United States.The last two papers in the volume extend the focus to look at more international concerns. One paper focuses on urban slum prevalence as a key factor in shaping population level rates of social well being in developing countries, and another on medical tourism. This volume includes papers that focus on the perspectives of patients, providers, and also the relevant links with health policy.
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The rapid deterioration of the American health-care system, and the debate about what to do about it, is generating a maelstrom of news stories, magazine articles, and books. But the average person finds it difficult to make sense of this blizzard of information. Because the health-care system is large and complex, and because the symptoms of its decline are numerous, comprehensive reports about the health-care crisis are extremely rare. Comprehensive reports in everyday language are nonexistent.The Health-Care Mess was written to fill that void. It assumes the reader knows nothing about health policy. As Kip Sullivan puts it, The Health-Care Mess is the book he wishes someone had given to him in 1986 when he, a community organizer, jumped into the cold, choppy waters of the health-care reform debate. At that time, he had no training in health policy. But in the course of studying the health-care system and explaining its problems to thousands of people, he discovered that health policy is not only accessible but fascinating.The book resembles a textbook in that it treats a complex subject comprehensively, and it is meticulously documented. But it doesn’t read like a textbook. The author speaks in an informal, conversational style, he makes minimal use of jargon, and explains what jargon he has to use. And he is not coy about expressing his opinions. He believes the health-care reform debate has been unduly influenced by big corporations, especially those in the insurance and drug industries. He concludes that the health-care crisis will be solved only when America adopts a “Medicare-for-all” system, a system in which universal coverage is implemented by expanding a reformed Medicare program to all Americans.The Health-Care Mess explains the debate about what’s wrong with the health-care system, and how to fix it, in terms everyone can understand.
