Rethinking Health Care

Rethinking Health Care explains that the context for the reorganization of U.S. health care over the last several decades has been set by broader developments in the national and international political economies and shows how these health care developments have, in turn, affected the larger social and economic transformations that were occurring.

Max Heirich is professor of sociology at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and the co-author of Health Policy: Understanding Our Choices from National Reform to Market Force ( 1997).

Introduction -- Understanding How We Got Here: Creating a Health-Care Industry -- First Efforts at Cost Control -- Health-Care Innovation in a Rapidly Changing World Economy -- The 1990s: Efforts at More Basic Reform in a New World Order -- Contending Strategies for Reform: Underlying Principles, Unanticiapated Consequences, and Unmet Problems -- Origins of New Health-Care Perspectives -- Holistic Health -- Prevention and Health Promotion: Industry, the Government and Foundations Innovate -- Understanding the Ecology of Health and Disease -- Reapproaching Health: Next Steps -- Reapproaching Problems of Cost -- Reapproaching Problems of Access -- In Conclusion -- Appendix: Tables