This book offers a timely account of health reform struggles in developed democracies. The editors, leading experts in the field, have brought together a group of distinguished scholars to explore the ambitions and realities of health care regulation, financing, and delivery across countries. These wide ranging essays cover policy debates and reforms in Canada, Germany, Holland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as separate treatments of some of the most prominent issues confronting policy makers. These include primary care, hospital care, long term care, pharmaceutical...

This book presents the healthcare reform experiences of six small- to mid-sized, but dynamic, economies spanning the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Europe. Usually not given serious consideration in major international comparisons because of their small size, each in fact provides a fascinating case study that illuminates the understanding of the dynamics of healthcare reform. Although dissimilar in historical and cultural backgrounds, they share some important features: all faced very similar pressures for change in the 1970s and 1980s; all considered a very similar range of policy...