Overview
Health care systems across the world are in a state of permanent revolution as they struggle to cope with multiple pressures arising from changing demography, new technologies, and limited resources. Focusing on the British NHS, this book offers a fresh look at how it has coped with such pressures over its 60 year history and considers what the future holds. The book explores the complexity of health policy and health services, offering a critical perspective on their development. The health debate offers a lively and accessible reassessment of successive reforms of the NHS and their cyclical nature. The book will appeal to all students of health care and health policy, and to policy-makers and health care professionals.
Synopsis
"Health care systems across the world are in a state of permanent revolution as they struggle to cope with multiple pressures arising from changing demography, new technologies and limited resources. Focusing on the British National Health Service (NHS), this book offers a fresh look at how it has coped with such pressures over its 60-year history and considers what the future holds.The book explores the complexity of health policy and health services, offering a critical perspective on their development." "A number of tensions are evident in contemporary health policy and the book is organised around a selection of these, including: the funding of health systems and the changing mix of public and private arrangements; the capture of medicine by management; the imbalance between health and health care; and the growing emphasis on markets and competition in health care systems." The health debate offers a lively and accessible reassessment of successive reforms of the NHS and their cyclical nature. Two unique features of the book are its breadth and the assembly in one publication of a range of interrelated, and largely unresolved, policy puzzles. It will appeal to all students of health care and health policy and to policy makers and health care professionals.