Understanding Health Policy,   ISBN:9780071378154

Customer Rating: 

This was a required reading, and well worth it. It helped to clarify many ideas on health policy and the difficulties of each veiwpoint. Great summary on other types of healthcare systems around the world. I'm keeping this as a board review/reference book for myself.

Customer Rating: 

I am reading this book for a course I am currently taking. While there is a good deal to be learned in terms of information, you have to be careful to separate the authors' opinions from facts practically throughout. The authors are at least kind enough to warn the reader at the outset that they "believe that health care should be a right enjoyed equally by everyone". In Chapter 13, which is on ethics, they advocate the idea of "distributive justice". The authors use many "vignettes" throughout the text to illustrate their points as well, but they tend to cloud reason because they are often emotionally charged. There are many ways in which liberal ideology insinuates itself throughout the text. Fine if you already have a liberal point of view, I suppose, but annoying to the student trying to separate fact from liberal-oriented opinion. I do not recommend this book.

Customer Rating: 

I teach healthcare policy and am currently using this text. It does a great job covering the important issues. It's quite readable, as a new edition very topical and, through the use of vignettes, humanizes the consequences of policy decisions. It also has questions keyed to each chapter for assignment use. It is not an academic text and I am supplementing with articles (many of which can be found in the excellent references section following the chapters) as well as articles from news sources. Recommend highly.

Customer Rating: 

An excellent explanation of the current status of the American health care issues. Up to date data is an extra.

Customer Rating: 

Very concise overview of health policy, which makes it a perfect read for the many US med students who are only interested in a superficial understanding of complex social processes.