Five capitalist democracies around the world - Japan, Taiwan, Switzerland, Great Britain, and Germany - all have health care systems that provide health care for everyone. They have higher life expectancies, lower infant mortality rates, and spend less money than the U.S. for health care. At any given time, at least 45 million Americans do not have health insurance. What lessons can the U.S. learn about health care from other countries? In this video...

A government takeover of the US health care system has never looked more plausible. Support for the idea is at an all-time high. Two-thirds of Democratic voters favor "single-payer" health care; even one in four Republicans is on board.

In this Broadside, Sally C. Pipes makes the case against single-payer by offering evidence of its devastating effects on patients in Canada, the United Kingdom, and even the United States. Long wait times,

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In recent decades, we have seen five perilous and interlocking trends dominate global discourse: irreversible climate change, extreme food and water shortages, rising chronic illnesses, and rampant obesity. Why can't we make any progress in counteracting these problems, despite vast expenditures of intellectual, institutional, and societal capital? What makes these global emergencies the wicked problems" that resist our best efforts and only grow...

The starting point of Ann Oakley's fascinating book is the fracture of her right arm in the grounds of a hotel in the USA. What begins as an accident becomes a journey into some critical themes of modern Western culture: the crisis of embodiment and the perfect self; the confusion between body and identity; the commodification of bodies and body parts; the intrusive surveillance and profiteering of medicine and the law; the problem of ageing; and...

Free To Choose Medicine offers a compelling argument for the freedom of every patient, guided by the advice of his or her doctor, to make informed decisions about the use of not-yet-FDA-approved therapeutic drugs that are in late stages of clinical testing. After discussing the FDA's current drug approval process, the author presents an easy-to-read, yet comprehensive case for the Free To Choose Medicine Act-a policy that would bring enormous benefits...

For years the NHS has been the most trusted of public institutions and the envy of many around the world. But today there is turmoil. Painful shortcomings in clinical care and patient experience, together with funding cuts, threaten to dig deep into service levels and standards. Seventy years of technically advanced medicine provided free to the population has produced a widespread perception of patients as passive consumers of health care. This book...

We are in a remarkable time in healthcare. Market forces, healthcare policy, and politics have converged to create opportunities that we haven't seen in the US or the UK for a century, when healthcare policies for the two countries diverged sharply. By coming full circle, we have a second opportunity to create a more sound and sustainable way to finance our healthcare here in the US. There is much to learn from studying the history of reform efforts...

The mutual distrust between Democrats and Republicans seems to have affected every topic of our healthcare system. The focus of conversation circles politics rather than finding innovative solutions to providing the most efficient care at the lowest cost. In Solving the American Healthcare Crisis, Dr. Robert J. Cerfolio, MD, MBA, discusses practical solutions to such problems as providing universal access to healthcare and motivating physicians, patients,...

This book explores the fundamental currents and tensions that lie behind recent trends in health policy such as shared decision-making, co-production, and personalisation.

Next January will see the swearing in of Congress, a President, and many legislators and governors. When that happens the issue of healthcare will be on the table. Republicans are committed to repealing Obamacare. Democrats are just as committed to keeping it. No matter who's in the White House, the new law will be reviewed, and probably changed, if not tossed out altogether. When those debates begin, if there is a single book every concerned citizen,...