Comparative Health Policy
Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrative Material -- Preface -- List of Abbreviations -- 1 Comparative Health Policy: An Introduction -- Health care as public policy -- Comparative health policy -- Classifications of health care systems -- Countries selected for study -- Growing problems in health policy -- Ageing populations -- Medical technology and health policy -- Rising public expectations and demands -- Policy convergence? -- Conclusions -- 2 The Context of Health Care -- Institutionalist explanations: contrasting political systems -- Legal systems -- Cultural explanations: cultural/historical factors shaping health care -- Different approaches to defining health -- Culture and traditional medicine -- Functionalist explanations: population, wealth and economics -- Social and economic determinants of health -- The context of health care -- 3 Funding, Provision and Governance -- Comparing funding of health systems -- Models of funding health services -- Control of funding and pressures for reform -- Health care settings and patient choice -- Welfare mixes in the provision of health care -- Medical payment and governance -- Health governance between centre and locality -- Health systems, governance and policy -- 4 Setting Priorities and Allocating Resources -- The goals of health policy -- Equity and access: continuing problems -- Quality care: what is it? -- Cost containment: strategies of constraint -- Demand-side strategies -- Supply-side strategies -- The government and the marketplace -- Allocation and rationing: the need to set priorities -- Rationing by lifestyle and age -- Efforts to control new technologies -- Information technologies in medical practice -- Trends in priority setting -- 5 The Health Workforce -- Who doctors are -- Doctors as health policy players -- Professional self-regulation of medical work.