Putting Health Care on the National Agenda, 2nd Edition

Putting Health Care on the National Agenda is a timely and readable volume written for an audience that might be defined as most of us...everyone interested in becoming more informed in order to better participate in our nation's great health care debate. Journal of the American Medical Association on the first edition.

This updated primer on the US health care debate examines such topics as the changing doctor-patient relationship, the growth of managed care, the rise and decline of hospitals, American businesses and health benefits, and the uninsured. It pays attention to failed 1994 health care reforms.

This revised edition of Arnold Birenbaum's important book brings the work up to date through the end of 1994 and the close of the 103rd Congress. It offers a comprehensive, provocative, and completely new assessment of health care reform with a focus on financing and coverage. A fine primer...on the health care debate (JAMA), the book examines such topics as the changing doctor-patient relationship, the growth of managed care, the rise and decline of hospitals, American business and health benefits, and the uninsured in America. This new edition takes particular heed to the failure of health care reform in 1994.

In responding to the first edition, Victor Sidel, M.D., former president of the American Public Health Association, called it, "A wonderfully far-ranging, meticulously documented, insightfully analyzed and remarkably well written challenge to professionals, patients, and community members to work for effective change in a bizarre, expensive, inefficient, and often unresponsive medical care system."