This book traces the growth of managed care as a mechanism for curbing excessive growth in health costs, and the controversies that have risen around for-profit health care. Also examined are decentralization in US health care, and the absence of comprehensive health care planning, access rules, and minimum health care benefit standards. Finally, the author proposes a framework for improving access to quality, affordable health care in a competitive market environment.

The goal of this book is to propose an alternative approach to address the problem of the exponential rise of health care costs, and, more importantly, to address the lingering dilemma of how to establish broadly agreed-upon fundamental guidelines by which health care can be managed in a manner that is more morally appropriate. Although in no way a new concept, the notion that society's financial resources, even when it comes to health care, are indeed limited is one with which the general public has grown increasingly familiar only during the past two decades. Familiarity, however, does not...