EBOOK
About
Foreword by Harvey V. Fineberg, President of the Institute of Medicine
For 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: We've left out of our tally the most impactful expenditures countries make to improve the health of their populations-investments in social services.
In The American Health Care Paradox, Bradley and Taylor illuminate how narrow definitions of "health care," 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 "system" 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 won't solve, this book also points a new way forward. Elizabeth H. Bradley is the president of Vassar College, professor of science, technology, and society, and professor of political science. She has been a recipient of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant, and was previously the founder and faculty director of the Global Health Leadership Institute at Yale University and served as hospital administrator at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.
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 & Melinda Gates Foundation. She completed a masters in public health at Yale University in 2009. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts. "Bradley and Taylor have identified social services as the unnamed culprit behind high health care costs and poor outcomes. Highlighting the non-medical determinants of patients' health may not only make physicians' jobs easier but also prove to be a prudent strategy for payers. This book offers an important reality check about what actually creates health in the United States." William Gillespie, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Emblem Health, and president of AdvantageCare Physicians "The American Health Care Paradox has enough intellectual heft to bring an opera house to its feet. Drawing on data from dozens of international and domestic site visits, wide-ranging scholarly studies and in-depth interviews with patients, practitioners, health care administrators and social service staff from all over the world, the authors tackle the unenviable task of explaining why we think of health care the way we do-;to the near total exclusion of social services. And they manage to do it with astonishing clarity, conciseness and narrative ease." Pauline Chen, the New York Times
"An important attempt to shift the discussion on health in the United States" Kirkus
"Their argument has intuitive appeal [and] is made more attractive by their clear prose and by their many helpful descriptions and historical explanations of US health care policy." Arnold Relman, New York Review of Books
Admirably presented as an apolitical examination of an urgent situation, Bradley and Taylor's carefully researched and lucidly reported findings offer what appears to be an easily rendered fix, but their equally striking depiction of uniquely American hostility to government involvement in private matters, exposes a daunting uphill battle." Publishers Weekly "It seems like there are daily stories of skyrocketing medical costs here in the US coupled with o
For 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: We've left out of our tally the most impactful expenditures countries make to improve the health of their populations-investments in social services.
In The American Health Care Paradox, Bradley and Taylor illuminate how narrow definitions of "health care," 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 "system" 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 won't solve, this book also points a new way forward. Elizabeth H. Bradley is the president of Vassar College, professor of science, technology, and society, and professor of political science. She has been a recipient of a Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation grant, and was previously the founder and faculty director of the Global Health Leadership Institute at Yale University and served as hospital administrator at Massachusetts General Hospital. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and lives in Poughkeepsie, New York.
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 & Melinda Gates Foundation. She completed a masters in public health at Yale University in 2009. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts. "Bradley and Taylor have identified social services as the unnamed culprit behind high health care costs and poor outcomes. Highlighting the non-medical determinants of patients' health may not only make physicians' jobs easier but also prove to be a prudent strategy for payers. This book offers an important reality check about what actually creates health in the United States." William Gillespie, MD, Chief Medical Officer of Emblem Health, and president of AdvantageCare Physicians "The American Health Care Paradox has enough intellectual heft to bring an opera house to its feet. Drawing on data from dozens of international and domestic site visits, wide-ranging scholarly studies and in-depth interviews with patients, practitioners, health care administrators and social service staff from all over the world, the authors tackle the unenviable task of explaining why we think of health care the way we do-;to the near total exclusion of social services. And they manage to do it with astonishing clarity, conciseness and narrative ease." Pauline Chen, the New York Times
"An important attempt to shift the discussion on health in the United States" Kirkus
"Their argument has intuitive appeal [and] is made more attractive by their clear prose and by their many helpful descriptions and historical explanations of US health care policy." Arnold Relman, New York Review of Books
Admirably presented as an apolitical examination of an urgent situation, Bradley and Taylor's carefully researched and lucidly reported findings offer what appears to be an easily rendered fix, but their equally striking depiction of uniquely American hostility to government involvement in private matters, exposes a daunting uphill battle." Publishers Weekly "It seems like there are daily stories of skyrocketing medical costs here in the US coupled with o