Health care professionals and policy managers, health care policy researchers and analysts, and students will find Changing the U.S. Health Care System to be an essential text for fully understanding public health, health policy, and the possibility of reform.

Table of Contents

PART ONE: ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE
1. Improving Access to Care in America: Individual and Contextual Indicators
2. Public Policies to Extend Health Care Coverage

PART TWO: COSTS OF HEALTH CARE
3. Measuring Health Care Costs and Trends
4. Containing Health Care Costs
5. Pharmaceutical Prices and Expenditures

PART THREE: QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE
6. Measuring Outcomes and Health-Related Quality of Life
7. Evaluating the Quality of Care
8. Public Release of Information on Quality

PART FOUR: SPECIAL POPULATIONS
9. Long-Term Care and the Elderly Population
10. AIDS in the Twenty-First Century: Challenges for Health Services and Public Health
11. Health Reform for Children and Families
12. Mental Health Services and Policy Issues
13. Women's Health: Key Issues in Access to Insurance Coverage and to Services Among Nonelderly Women
14. Homeless Persons

PART FIVE: DIRECTIONS FOR CHANGE
15. Managed Care and the Growth of Competition
16. Medicare Reform
17. The Role of Prevention
18. Public Health and Personal Health Services
19. The Continuing Issue of Medical Malpractice Liability
20. Ethical Issues in Public Health and Health Services