Health Care Economics

Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row - a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year - and they're still rising. Case and Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class.

In Curable journalist and health care advocate Travis Christofferson looks at medicine through a magnifying glass and asks an important question: What if the roots of the current US health care crisis are psychological and systemic, perpetuated not just by corporate influence and the powers that be, but by you and me? Curable outlines the future of medicine, detailing brilliant examples of new health care systems that prove we can do better. It turns out we have more control over our health (and happiness) than we think.

We hear it all the time: “Sorry, it was just an accident.” And we’ve been deeply conditioned to just accept that explanation and move on. But as Jessie Singer argues convincingly: There are no such things as accidents. The vast majority of mishaps are not random but predictable and preventable. Singer uncovers just how the term accident itself protects those in power and leaves the most vulnerable in harm’s way, preventing investigations, pushing off debts, blaming the victims, diluting anger, and even sparking empathy for the perpetrators. to account.

In The Spirit Level Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett put inequality at the centre of public debate by showing conclusively that less equal societies fare worse than more equal ones across everything from education to life expectancy. The Inner Level now explains how inequality affects us individually, how it alters how we think, feel and behave. It sets out the overwhelming evidence that material inequalities have powerful psychological effects: when the gap between rich and poor increases, so does the tendency to define and value ourselves and others in terms of superiority and inferiority.

We are living in a golden age of biomedical innovation, yet entrepreneurs still struggle with the so-called Valley of Death when seeking funding for their biotech start-ups. In Healthcare Finance, Andrew Lo and Shomesh Chaudhuri show that there are better ways to finance breakthrough therapies, and they provide the essential financial tools and concepts for creating the next generation of healthcare technologies.

America's leaders say the economy is strong and getting stronger. But the safety net that once protected us is fast unraveling. With retirement plans in growing jeopardy while health coverage erodes, more and more economic risk is shifting from government and business onto the fragile shoulders of the American family. In The Great Risk Shift, Jacob S. Hacker lays bare this unsettling new economic climate, showing how it has come about, what it is doing to our families, and how we can fight back.

Since its foundation in 1948, the NHS has been a cornerstone of British life—we are born into it, we are looked after by it, and quite often we die in it. From the sexual revolution of the '60s to the first test tube baby, from the Mental Health Act to the Coronavirus crisis, it has made history again and again—shaping our society and culture. But the NHS has also become a battleground for some of the fiercest political contests of our time; perceived as a national treasure that needs to be preserved at all costs, and as a lumbering piece of state machinery in need of renovation.

In The Body Economic, Stuckler and Basu mine data from around the globe and throughout history to show how government policy becomes a matter of life and death during financial crises. In a series of historical case studies stretching from 1930s America, to Russia and Indonesia in the 1990s, to present-day Greece, Britain, Spain, and the U.S., Stuckler and Basu reveal that governmental mismanagement of financial strife has resulted in a grim array of human tragedies.

The United States spends far more money on health care than any other country, and yet nearly 50 million Americans are uninsured at least part of the time each year. Health Care Reform Now! is written for anyone who cares enough about our health-care situation to consider serious alternatives to the current system.

Popular progressive radio host and New York Times best-selling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to establish affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.

In 1920, at the end of the last major pandemic, global life expectancy was just over 40 years. Today, in many parts of the world, human beings can expect to live more than 80 years. As a species, we have doubled our life expectancy in just one century. There are few measures of human progress more astonishing than this increased longevity.

We live in a world awash in manmade chemicals, from the pesticides on our front lawns to the diesel exhaust in the air we breathe. Although experts are beginning to understand the potential dangers of these substances, there are still more than 80,000 synthetic compounds that have not been sufficiently tested to interpret their effects on human health.

A brilliantly simple look at how we can fix healthcare without drastic policy change and political diatribes. Since FDR, the US healthcare system has been mired in politics and policy. All the while it has only increased in complexity and cost. Today half of all personal bankruptcies are attributable to healthcare costs. Many community hospitals are barely getting by with single digit profit margins. With a system teetering on the edge of a systemic crisis, we need to turn to a brand-new approach to rescue the US healthcare system.

The U.S. healthcare system is in critical condition--but this should come as a surprise to no one. Yet until now the solutions proposed have been unworkable, pie-in-the-sky plans that have had little chance of becoming law and even less of succeeding. In Code Red, David Dranove, one of the nation's leading experts on the economics of healthcare, proposes a set of feasible solutions that address access, efficiency, and quality.

Six Sigma Healthcare delivery means helping improve patient outcomes while driving down the cost of patient care. Doing so empowers healthcare providers to become more productive. Now, more than ever, the healthcare industry needs to embrace the economic value proposition of improving productivity. Healthcare sector can learn a good deal from industries that are working toward the Six Sigma goal. Let's try it in healthcare and see how close we can get.

Dr. Arline T. Geronimus coined the term “weathering” to describe the effects of systemic oppression—including racism and classism—on the body. In Weathering, based on more than 30 years of research, she argues that health and aging have more to do with how society treats us than how well we take care of ourselves. She explains what happens to human bodies as they attempt to withstand and overcome the challenges and insults that society leverages at them, and details how this process ravages their health. And she proposes solutions.

From the origins of consumerism to the evolution or revolution associated with consumerism in healthcare, this audiobook is a reflective depiction of the past, present, and future of healthcare as it empowers the consumer (patient). The Impact of Autonomy and Consumerism in Healthcare navigates the changing healthcare landscape, navigating some of these changes and what they mean not only for healthcare delivery but for providers, suppliers, and consumers.

Antibiotics are powerful drugs that can prevent and treat infections, but they are becoming less effective as a result of drug resistance. Resistance develops because the bacteria that antibiotics target can evolve ways to defend themselves against these drugs. When antibiotics fail, there is very little else to prevent an infection from spreading. Unnecessary use of antibiotics in both humans and animals accelerates the evolution of drug-resistant bacteria, with potentially catastrophic personal and global consequences.

In the American healthcare system, ignorance is not bliss. We are all paying the price for ever-increasing medical costs and the accompanying loss of quality care.

There was a time in this country when people who were well-off had two homes, and the super-rich may have had three residences. In 2008 a prominent politician was asked how many homes he had. He didn’t know. The number was eight...and in the ensuing years the income gap has only widened. Billionaires now have so much money and power that the very fabric of our nation is coming unraveled. Tax policy is fundamental to a nation’s stability. We need to return to the system that brought us a large, dynamic, educated middle class.