Restructuring Canada's Health Systems: How Do We Get There From Here?


Book Description

Is the Canadian health care system becoming a victim of its own success? It has done what it set out to do – provide universal access to all medically necessary health services without financial barriers to patients – but expanding technology, an aging population, and escalating costs strain its ability to continue. It is time to explore ways to reorient and restructure the health care system and the services it provides. At the Fourth Canadian Conference on Health Economics, contributors of international reputation addressed these concerns. Their papers, collected in this volume, consider a wide range of fundamental issues related to health care policies and structures. They discuss new developments in health care delivery, assess implications of such new policies as home care and health promotion, and propose concrete alternatives for restructuring the present system to sustain universal medicine.




Markets and Health Care


Book Description

A growing reliance on market disciplines and incentives characterised health care reform strategies in many countries in the 1990s, yet the country which relies most heavily on private health care - the U.S.A. - is the most expensive in the world and still fails to deliver affordable health care to millions of its citizens. This apparent paradox is the starting point for Markets and Health Care: A Comparative Analysis.




Health Care Reform and the Law in Canada


Book Description

Sweeping changes are being proposed as Canadians examine our health care system. But what are the legal implications of health care reform? In this timely collection, lawyers and legal scholars discuss a variety of topics in health care reform, including regulation of private care, interpretation of the Canada Health Act, and the constitutional implications of proposed reforms. Barbara von Tigerstrom is currently studying at the University of Cambridge in England. Timothy Caulfield lives in Edmonton, where he teaches at the University of Alberta.




Riding the Third Rail


Book Description

This book tells the story of how the Health Services Restructuring Commission developed a vision of an effective health services system for the twenty-first century and attempted to fill a policy and leadership void. (Midwest).




Health and Canadian Society


Book Description

Health and Canadian Society provides a comprehensive overview of the relationship between health, health care, and Canadian society. It is a wide-ranging volume that moves from personal and micro concerns to a more macro and institutional focus. It includes chapters of a descriptive nature and others with a more explanatory intent. They have been selected from the major journals or have been expressly written for this book. Ninety-five percent of the contributions are new to this edition. The chapters and the studies reported on are methodologically diverse, ranging from ethnographic studies to statistical analyses of data from large national surveys. Though the chapters are written by anthropologists, economists, historians, political scientists, and physicians, as well as sociologists, they all have a sociological "turn." Recognized as the standard textbook on the sociology of health in Canada, Health and Canadian Society is an essential reference for sociologists, health care providers, health administrators, and policy planners.




The New Public Health


Book Description

Countries around the world are engaged in health reform, which places great demands on health care providers and systems managers. From the managed care revolution in the United States to the rebuilding of health systems in postcommunist Russia, these reforms impact millions of health care workers, government officials, patients, and the public alike. The New Public Health will help students and practitioners understand factors affecting the reform process of health care organization and delivery. It links the classic public health issues such as environmental sanitation, health education, and epidemiology with the new issues of universal health care, economics, and management of health systems for the new century. - Provides a comprehensive overview of public health from a global perspective - Assesses health systems models of the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Scandinavian countries, and developing countries including China, Nigeria, and Colombia - Analyzes critical issues of health economics, including forces associated with escalating costs and the strategies to control those costs - Discusses strategies for dealing with the many ramifications of managed care - Links medicine with the social sciences, technology, and health management issues as they evolve




Exposing Privatization


Book Description

This book begins with the international context for health care reform and then moves from coast to coast, setting out what is known about the reforms in health care privatization that are underway and about their impact on women.




The Affordable Care Act and Medicare in Comparative Context


Book Description

Burdened with perennially rising costs and responsible for providing health insurance to more than one sixth of all Americans, Medicare in its original form is fiscally and demographically unsustainable. In light of dramatic reforms under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this book provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of Medicare. Eleanor D. Kinney explains how the ACA addresses systemic problems of cost and volume inflation, quality assurance, and fraud. Recognizing the potential for more radical change in the future, Kinney also explores the potential of Medicare to become a single-payer system. Comparisons are made with national health systems in Canada and the United Kingdom, from which the United States can draw valuable lessons. An approachable yet comprehensive account of Medicare and the ACA, this book will be invaluable for health care professionals and informed citizens.




A Cross-Cultural Dialogue on Health Care Ethics


Book Description

The ethical theories employed in health care today assume, in the main, a modern Western philosophical framework. Yet the diversity of cultural and religious assumptions regarding human nature, health and illness, life and death, and the status of the individual suggest that a cross-cultural study of health care ethics is needed. A Cross-Cultural Dialogue on Health Care Ethics provides this study. It shows that ethical questions can be resolved by examining the ethical principles present in each culture, critically assessing each value, and identifying common values found within all traditions, It encourages the development of global awareness and sensitivity to and respect for the diversity of peoples and their values and will advance understanding as well as help to foster a greater balance and a fuller truth in consideration of the human condition and what makes for health and wholeness.




Canadian Health Care and the State


Book Description

The contributors include prominent specialists in medical, military, and labour history, who provide valuable examinations of such issues as the ideological origins of the welfare state, the experience of the Canadian Army Medical Corps during the First World War, and the development of neuropsychology during the Second World War. Several essays are particularly relevant to contemporary concerns. A history of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in Canada, extended to include present-day research, reveals underlying flaws in the approach to STDs taken by Canadian governments and the medical establishment. The comparative development of health insurance in Canada and the United States is discussed in another essay. Other authors provide a historical and critical review of a key assumption of Canadian Medicare: that universal first-dollar coverage will enhance equity in the use of health services and in health status. In addition to David Naylor, who writes the Introduction, the contributors are Robin F. Badgley, Jay Cassel, Terry Copp, Raisa B. Deber, Colin D. Howell, Stephen J. Kunitz, Desmond Morton, Eugene Vayda, Samuel Wolfe, and Judith Young.