Power Politics And Universal Health Care

Essential reading for every American who must navigate the US health care system. Why was the Obama health plan so controversial and difficult to understand? In this readable, entertaining, and substantive book, Stuart Altman—internationally recognized expert in health policy and adviser to five US presidents—and fellow health care specialist David Shactman explain not only the Obama health plan but also many of the intriguing stories in the hundred-year saga leading up to the landmark 2010 legislation. Blending political intrigue, policy substance, and good old-fashioned storytelling, this is the first book to place the Obama health plan within a historical perspective. The authors describe the sometimes haphazard, piece-by-piece construction of the nation’s health care system, from the early efforts of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman to the later additions of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. In each case, they examine the factors that led to success or failure, often by illuminating little-known political maneuvers that brought about immense shifts in policy or thwarted herculean efforts at reform. The authors look at key moments in health care history: the Hill–Burton Act in 1946, in which one determined poverty lawyer secured the rights of the uninsured poor to get hospital care; the "three-layer cake" strategy of powerful House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Wilbur Mills to enact Medicare and Medicaid under Lyndon Johnson in 1965; the odd story of how Medicare catastrophic insurance was passed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and then repealed because of public anger in 1989; and the fact that the largest and most expensive expansion of Medicare was enacted by George W. Bush in 2003. President Barack Obama is the protagonist in the climactic chapter, learning from the successes and failures chronicled throughout the narrative. The authors relate how, in the midst of a worldwide financial meltdown, Obama overcame seemingly impossible obstacles to accomplish what other presidents had tried and failed to achieve for nearly one hundred years.

With the Affordable Care Act signed into law in 2010, the United States seemed closer than ever to achieving universal health care. However, repealing the act has been a key goal for the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, with the main arguments against it including the higher premiums for middle-class Americans and the abuse of government power through its control of the insurance industry. This volume helps define universal health care, explains the arguments for and against it, and discusses attempts to implement it on an international scale.

In 2015, building on the advances of the Millennium Development Goals, the United Nations adopted Sustainable Development Goals that include an explicit commitment to achieve universal health coverage by 2030. However, enormous gaps remain between what is achievable in human health and where global health stands today, and progress has been both incomplete and unevenly distributed. In order to meet this goal, a deliberate and comprehensive effort is needed to improve the quality of health care services globally. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm: Improving Health Care Worldwide focuses on one particular shortfall in health care affecting global populations: defects in the quality of care. This study reviews the available evidence on the quality of care worldwide and makes recommendations to improve health care quality globally while expanding access to preventive and therapeutic services, with a focus in low-resource areas. Crossing the Global Quality Chasm emphasizes the organization and delivery of safe and effective care at the patient/provider interface. This study explores issues of access to services and commodities, effectiveness, safety, efficiency, and equity. Focusing on front line service delivery that can directly impact health outcomes for individuals and populations, this book will be an essential guide for key stakeholders, governments, donors, health systems, and others involved in health care.

Generation SICK is a book that exposes the hidden hand of power, politics and propaganda behind America's health crisis. The so-called Healthcare System in America was never designed to be about health, it was designed from the beginning, to be about money, power and control. The fact is, your sickness, pain and suffering keeps them in business. It does not have to be that way. Knowledge is power and this book is the game changer!

Even the most powerful men in the world are human—they get sick, take dubious drugs, drink too much, contemplate suicide, fret about ailing parents, and bury people they love. Young Richard Nixon watched two brothers die of tuberculosis, even while doctors monitored a suspicious shadow on his own lungs. John Kennedy received last rites four times as an adult, and Lyndon Johnson suffered a "belly buster" of a heart attack. David Blumenthal and James A. Morone explore how modern presidents have wrestled with their own mortality—and how they have taken this most human experience to heart as they faced the difficult politics of health care. Drawing on a trove of newly released White House tapes, on extensive interviews with White House staff, and on dramatic archival material that has only recently come to light, The Heart of Power explores the hidden ways in which presidents shape our destinies through their own experiences. Taking a close look at Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Herbert Walker Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, the book shows what history can teach us as we confront the health care challenges of the twenty-first century.

After World War II, the United States and Canada, two countries that were very similar in many ways, struck out on radically divergent paths to public health insurance. Canada developed a universal single-payer system of national health care, while the United States opted for a dual system that combines public health insurance for low-income and senior residents with private, primarily employer-provided health insurance—or no insurance—for everyone else. In National Health Insurance in the United States and Canada, Gerard W. Boychuk probes the historical development of health care in each country, honing in on the most distinctive social and political aspects of each country—the politics of race in the U.S. and territorial politics in Canada, especially the tensions between the national government and the province of Quebec. In addition to the politics of race and territory, Boychuk sifts through the numerous factors shaping health policy, including national values, political culture and institutions, the power of special interests, and the impact of strategic choices made at critical junctures. Drawing on historical archives, oral histories, and public opinion data, he presents a nuanced and thoughtful analysis of the evolution of the two systems, compares them as they exist today, and reflects on how each is poised to meet the challenges of the future.

Medicine.

The move towards socialized health care is one of the most radical steps ever taken in American domestic politics. It will eventually change the political landscape and America as we know it. A nationalized health care system is not the quick fix that its proponents claim. It is a vehicle for long-term political and economical influence and will change America in a more radical way than we can portray today. Jon Kallberg as a conservative Swede, born and raised in one of the most liberal countries in the world, presents the weaknesses and the pitfalls of a single payer universal health care system. The nationalized health care system has tenets that will have an impact beyond emergency rooms as it deals with youth clinics that provide health care and carry out abortion to minors without parental consent, requires significant tax hikes, and generates liberal political pressure out of the absolute power from this mammoth entity. Universal health care means the reduction of preventive care as universal health care systems are reactive instead of proactive. Services are provided once you are unhealthy and sick instead of promoting wellness through preventive care. The ability to sue for negligence and malpractice is a corner stone of patients rights. Without these rights, you will be at the mercy of the public health care system. One of the key tenets of universal health care is the nullification of patients rights and inability to obtain fair compensation for malpractice. Medicine and health care is power. It is the power over our lives and it impacts us no matter how we try to distance ourselves. It is essential that medical treatments are decided by doctors and not politicians. This governmental health care system will not only determine life and death based on the economic outlook of the government, but also erase family values as it paves the way for a reshaped nation. Kallberg addresses the myths about single payer universal health care by drawing comparisons with Sweden, which has one of the most comprehensive universal health care systems, and puts them into an American context. How Socialized Health Care Will Radically Change America explains what the proposed nationalized health care system means to you, as a parent, a patient, and eventually an elderly person, and how it will lead to a socialized health care system that becomes a steppingstone to another society. Jon Kallberg holds a J.D. / LL.M. from Juridicum Law School, Stockholm University, and a M.A. in Political Science from University of Texas at Dallas.