Review of Health Care and Reform in Industrialized Countries

Health Care and Reform in Industrialized Countries, edited by Marshall W. Raffel, is another reader for anyone interested in health care policy. Raffel did not write the entirety of the book; rather, the book is a collection of essays written by different economists, political theorists, and public health offiicials. Each author covered a particular industrized nation--the book covers much of the West, including Australia, Japan, and New Zealand--and its health care policies and infrastructure. Each section covers a nation's political system, medical practice, health costs, and the like. Thus, the book provides one with the opprotunity to compare and contrast the systems of any two countries listed in the book.

Peter R. Hatcher, a senior hospital manager from Canada, wrote the text concerning the UK's National Health Service (NHS). He described. rather briefly, how England's unitary state permitted the establishment of government-funded health care. The aforementioned, the author contended, has been a near impossibility in the United States because of the sharing of power between federal and local authorities , as well as the division of power between the executive and legislative branches.

The NHS, Hatcher wrote, is funded by the central government from general tax revenue, as well as contribution to a national health insurance plan. This arrangement came about after the release of the 1942 Beveridge Report which advocated "a comprehensive, universally avaliable, publicly financed system of health care to improve the living standards of the population." The National Health Service Act of 1948 made the aforementioned a reality. Britons enjoy a system in which many services are provided 'free at the point of use.' Additional services, if needed, are provided at little to no cost to the stakeholder. This arrangement is guaranteed thanks in part that many hospitals and their doctors are operated and paid by the NHS, thus keeping medical costs down. In addition, English law requires that NHS avoid deficts whenever possible. General practicioners and medical specialists, though not employed by the NHS, the government set terms through contracts. There has been a tendency in British health care to provide long term care in either stakeholders' home or in nursing homes.

The NHS, in Hatcher's estimation, is not a matter of the government extending its hand to those in need, but rather the government ensuring what is a societal right, the access to quality and affordable health care.

Overall, Raffel's text, in this writer's opinion, is a must-read resource if one wants to educate themselves or have a better understanding of health care benefits throughout the industrialized world.