Health Care Turning Point

An expert debunks popular misconceptions about health policy, including the merits of single-payer plans, and offers an alternative. In the battle over health care reform we can try to fashion new policies based on old ideas—or we can acknowledge today's demographic and economic realities. In Health Care Turning Point, health policy expert Roger Battistella argues that the conventional wisdom that dominates health policy debates is out of date. Battistella takes on popular misconceptions about the advantages of single-payer plans, the role of the market, and other health policy issues and outlines a pragmatic new approach. Few would disagree that the current system is broken. But, Battistella asserts provocatively, a government takeover of health insurance patterned after Medicare and Medicaid won't work either. Battistella argues that contrary to popular belief, single-payer coverage will not lower health spending but would encourage overconsumption and drive costs up. If consumers were responsible for buying their own health insurance (as they are for buying their own car and home insurance), he argues, they'd look for value and demand greater price and quality transparency from providers. The economic shibboleth that the principles of market competition don't apply to health care is nonsense, Battistella says. We won't achieve real health care reform until policy makers adjust to this reality and adopt a more pragmatic view.

If the furious debate around the state of healthcare in the US has led to any consensus, its that the system should be delivering better quality for less cost than it does. The truth is that our healthcare system is a sprawling mix of competing interests in which those of the patient are valued least. Too much discussion has devolved to simplistic

First published in 1999. This text examines the impasse in the development of alternatives to hospitals, drawing on the experience of both crisis service users and providers, and evidence of the effectiveness of such services. The book concludes that crisis services are preferred by users, are usually more cost effective and often more clinically effective than acute admissions wards. It offers a number of policy suggestions to advance the role of crisis services, including monitoring, evaluation and development centres, or programmes being established on a national basis, and joint training between crisis service and hospitals.

Turning Points: Challenges for Western Democracies in the 21st Century centers around the strikingly under-researched concept of turning points and its application in political science, including various theories, fields, and sub-disciplines. The chapters provide theoretical discussion and conceptual clarity by distinguishing a set of turning points at different analytical levels. Based on a wide range of case studies, the authors illustrate where, when and how different types of turning points occur (or not) against the backdrop of current challenges in and for Western democracies. The conceptual and empirical variety of the volume allows scholars and practitioners in policymaking to develop and apply their own frameworks when dealing with turning point dynamics.

If the furious debate around the state of healthcare in the US has led to any consensus, it‘s that the system should be delivering better quality for less cost than it does. The truth is that our healthcare system is a sprawling mix of competing interests in which those of the patient are valued least. Too much discussion has devolved to simplistic

The Turning Point is the first comprehensive chronicle of the contributions made by conscientious objectors who volunteered for service in America's mental hospitals and state institutions for the developmentally disabled during Word War II. It brings together excerpts from Life, Reader's Digest, and The Cleveland Press, as well as letters and personal reminiscences that recall the shock and distress of conscientious objectors at the conditions in state mental hospitals.