Recent data show wide disparity between Japan and the United States in the effectiveness of their health care systems. Japan spends close to the lowest percentage of its gross domestic product on health care among OECD countries, the United States spends the highest, yet life expectancies in...

The U.S. healthcare system is in critical condition--but this should come as a surprise to no one. Yet until now the solutions proposed have been unworkable, pie-in-the-sky plans that have had little chance of becoming law and even less of succeeding. In Code Red, David Dranove, one of the...

section 1. Introduction : setting the context -- section 2. Functional description of the U.S. health and medical care system -- section 3. Political and economic values and health care financing -- section 4. Health care reform in the United States : targeted programs and consequences.

Definitions of health and illness -- Public health : defining determinants of health -- Health status indicators -- Role of culture in the organization of health care systems -- Political and philosophical values that influence the US health care system -- Do we have as system? -- People who...