Health Care for Some: Rights and Rationing in the United States since 1930 - Tapa blanda

Críticas

"Beatrix Hoffman's goal is to encourage an honest debate about healthcare reform by identifying the varied forms of healthcare rationing.... It is a well-researched, readable primer on the development of the complex, fragmented US medical system.... Hoffman paints a striking picture of the human face of need." (Times Higher Education) "In the American political debate, everybody condemns the notion of 'rationing' health care. But Beatrix Hoffman's meticulous history shows that rationing-by income, age, employment, etc.-has been, and remains, a central element of America's medical system. She demonstrates that our various attempts at reform over the decades have kept the rationing mechanisms firmly in place." (T. R. Reid, author of The Healing of America: The Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care) "Beatrix Hoffman's rational, plainspoken analysis succeeds in clarifying the discourse around a topic of pressing national importance, delineating partisans' priorities, and discarding the numerous distractions." (Publishers Weekly)"

Reseña del editor

In Health Care for Some, Beatrix Hoffman offers an engaging and in-depth look at America’s long tradition of unequal access to health care. She argues that two main features have characterized the US health system: a refusal to adopt a right to care and a particularly American approach to the rationing of care. Health Care for Some shows that the haphazard way the US system allocates medical services—using income, race, region, insurance coverage, and many other factors—is a disorganized, illogical, and powerful form of rationing. And unlike rationing in most countries, which is intended to keep costs down, rationing in the United States has actually led to increased costs, resulting in the most expensive health care system in the world.

While most histories of US health care emphasize failed policy reforms, Health Care for Some looks at the system from the ground up in order to examine how rationing is experienced by ordinary Americans and how experiences of rationing have led to claims for a right to health care. By taking this approach, Hoffman puts a much-needed human face on a topic that is too often dominated by talking heads.