US Health Policy and Health Care Delivery
Doctors, Reformers, and Entrepreneurs

Ameringer explains the development and current state of America's overspecialized, uncoordinated, and fragmented healthcare industry.

Carl F. Ameringer (Author)

9781107117204, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 March 2018

188 pages, 1 b/w illus. 3 tables
23.4 x 15.8 x 1.2 cm, 0.4 kg

'This is a compact, highly readable story of the jostling of interests, and Ameringer's book wrangles the unruly history of the U.S. healthcare system into a neater and more linear story.' Miriam J. Laugesen, Bulletin of the History of Medicine

The unique composition and configuration of doctors and hospitals in the US is leading to a crisis in primary care provision. There are significantly more specialists than generalists, and many community hospitals and outpatient facilities are concentrated in affluent areas with high rates of comprehensive insurance coverage. These particular features present difficult challenges to policymakers seeking to increase access to care. Carl F. Ameringer shows why the road to universal healthcare is not built on universal finance alone. Policymakers in other countries successfully align finance with delivery to achieve better access, lower costs, and improved population health. This book explains how the US healthcare system developed, and why efforts to expand insurance coverage in the absence of significant changes to delivery will fuel higher costs without achieving the desired results.

1. Health policy and health care delivery
2. The scientific practitioner, 1870–1918
3. Group medical practice and group insurance, 1919–1943
4. The hospital as community health center, 1945–1965
5. The turn to market competition, 1965–1995
6. The emergence of corporate health systems, 1996–2015.

Subject Areas: Medical & healthcare law [LNTM], 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000 [HBLW], History of the Americas [HBJK]