The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
For Americans, the rationing scheme works not through wait times but through the mechanism of price.
Elizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
Nixon. In the course of their growth, managed care organizations have become focused on reducing health service use (and attendant costs) rather than on managing health,
Elizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
DECISIONS ABOUT HOW TO DELIVER social and health services in Scandinavia are governed largely by the concept of local accountability. The strength of local government is apparent in comparative data from Scandinavia, France, Italy, and Great Britain, which show local government budgets accounting for larger percentages of total government spending
... See moreElizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
According to the World Health Organization (WHO) Constitution of 1948, health is “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”
Elizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
the recognition that the health status of a population depends on much more than health care.
Elizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
But the United States is not spending as much as other industrialized countries on fortifying crucial social services that help make people healthy. For instance, it spends less than 10 percent of its GDP on social services, while France, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, and Italy all spend about 20 percent of their GDP on social services (se
... See moreElizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
In examining broad health interventions, however, recognizing the impact of these larger factors is critical. What might be dismissed as a factor to control in a biomedical experiment, such as the presence of a family support system, is often a fundamental facet of the intervention from a complex systems perspective. As Garrett Hardin, ecologist an
... See moreElizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
Keeping Americans at or above a certain baseline of good health requires collective action to assure the availability of such necessities as food, housing, and transportation.
Elizabeth Bradley • The American Health Care Paradox: Why Spending More is Getting Us Less
Not included as health spending are expenditures for social services and economic well-being that contribute to health, such as investments in housing, nutrition, education, the environment and unemployment support.