The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less

Similarly, the Ministry of Health and Social Care in Denmark is responsible for establishing broad legislative and financial frameworks for both health and social policy, while responsibility for service design and provision are decentralized to thirteen counties and more than one hundred municipalities.

to balance “upstream” work to keep people healthy through adequate services in the social sphere, with “downstream” work of medical care for people after they have become ill.

[High-quality care] doesn’t require high-level physician care, but it does require interaction with some type of either health care or social services . . . I think other chronic illnesses like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and so on are things that we could manage if there was a way of managing patients in between their hospital a

In a study using data from the Centers for Disease Control/National Center for Health Statistics from 1999 to 2001, Professors Mark Cullen, Clint Cummins, and Victor Fuchs from Stanford University reported that a common set of twenty-two socioeconomic and environmental variables (including education, income, air pollution, and access to healthy foo

Inadequate attention to and investment in services that address the broader determinants of health is the unnamed culprit behind why the United States spends so much on health care but continues to lag behind in health outcomes.

“All people are of equal worth and the individual should be free to act . . . all people should have an equal chance to realize their efforts. For this to be possible, it is necessary that the major differences between the health of different groups should be reduced. The Committee has chosen not to define what health means. Health is a subjective

One considerable barrier is the lack of resources within the social services sector itself.

the recognition that the health status of a population depends on much more than health care.

World Health Organization’s definition of health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being,”

In both cases, providers and patients are working toward their own self-interest given the health care choices they face. Health care providers are trying to make the best living possible by structuring days to see a maximum number of patients, in light of the demands that administrative and paperwork place on their time. Patients and their familie