Healthy Wealthy or Wise?

This book focuses on the problems in America's health care system that have developed over the past 30 years and that will be with us for the next 30 years. It goes beyond mind-numbing quantitative data to probe the underlying causes of the nation's difficulties. Three broad questions are addressed: Why are health care costs in the United States higher than elsewhere? What needs to be done to bring down costs without lowering quality? Is America doing enough about research, prevention, and public information? Chapter 1 Determinants of Health; Chapter 2 Why Are Costs Out of Control?; Chapter 3 Must Living Standards Decline?; Chapter 4 Health Insurance Raises Demand and Supply; Chapter 5 The Excess of Physicians and Services; Chapter 6 The Medicalization of Health; Chapter 7 Mental Illness; Chapter 8 The Excessive Demand for Medical Care; Chapter 9 Research and Technology; Chapter 10 The Physician as Agent; Chapter 11 Prevention: Environmental and Behavioral Modification; Chapter 12 The Demedicalization of Health Care; Chapter 13 What to Do?;