As America's struggle with the dual problem of exploding health costs and assuring access to health care for the uninsured, health care rationing has moved to the centre of the public policy debate. A prime example of this is the intense public discussion surrounding the proposal by the state of Oregon to provide universal health care but to ration which diagnoses and treatments will be covered. Focusing largely on the Oregon proposal, this volume examines a wide range of ethical, methodological, legal and political issues that must be addressed by any serious programme of health care...

The United States is engaged in a critically important and contentious debate on how to overhaul the way it delivers and pays for long-term care. Most families that are confronted with caring for a disabled elderly relative are often guaranteed financial catastrophe. The authors of this book examine a wide range of financing approaches to reforming long-term care and the impacts they would have over the next twenty-five years. The central issues in the debate about reforming long-term care concerns the relative roles of the public and private sectors. The authors urge that private insurance...

A key issue in the debate about reforming the U.S. health care system is how to finance and organize the delivery of long-term care. This book offers perspectives on several important facets of this problem, including regulation of private long-term care insurance, catastrophic out-of-pocket costs, and use of long-term and acute care services by the chronically disabled elderly.

Caring for the Disabled Elderly analyzes the major options for reforming the way long-term care is financed. It first explores the potential market for private long-term care insurance and other private sector initiatives.