Summary
Contents
Subject index
Guide to U.S. Health and Health Care Policy provides the analytical connections showing students how issues and actions are translated into public policies and institutions for resolving or managing healthcare issues and crises, such as the recent attempt to reform the national healthcare system. The Guide highlights the decision-making cycle that requires the cooperation of government, business, and an informed citizenry in order to achieve a comprehensive approach to advancing the nation's healthcare policies. Through 30 topical, operational, and relational essays, the book addresses the development of the U.S. healthcare system and policies, the federal agencies and public and private organizations that frame and administer those policies, and the challenges of balancing the nation's healthcare needs with the rising costs of medical research, cost-effective treatment, and adequate health insurance.
Key Features: 30 topical essays investigate the fundamental political, social, economic, and procedural initiatives that drive health and health care policy decisions affecting Americans at the local, regional, and national levels.; Essential themes traced throughout the chapters include providing access to healthcare, national and international intervention, nutrition and health, human and financial resource allocation, freedom of religion versus public policy, discrimination and healthcare policy, universal healthcare coverage, private healthcare versus publicly funded healthcare, and the immediate and long-term costs associated with disease prevention, treatment, and health maintenance.; A Glossary of Key Healthcare Policy Terms and Events, a Selected Master Bibliography, and a thorough Index are included.
This must-have reference for political science and public policy students who seek to understand the issues affecting health care policy in the U.S. is suitable for academic, public, high school, government, and professional libraries.
Chapter 13: Government Financing of Health Care (1940s–Present)
Government Financing of Health Care (1940s–Present)
About every other dollar flowing into the health care system is paid by governmental sources, particularly the federal, but also state governments, with the remainder being paid for via private means, both insurance and self-pay. However, governmental financing has played an even larger role in shaping the health care system, first in an era of initial and continued infrastructure building and later following the passage of the key insurance programs Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Through Medicare, the federal government provided a predictable payer of broad-based health care services, and over time the inclusion of a service or therapy in Medicare's benefit package came to be viewed as a practical definition of ...
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