num_pages: 236
description: Since 1965, the average American's expenditure on health care has increased tenfold. As a percentage of gross national product, health expenditures have nearly doubled over the same period. Due in part to these cost increases, a number of alternatives to traditional health insurance have emerged, and new institutions for the delivery of health care, such as Health Maintenance and Preferred Provider Organizations, have become commonplace within the last decade. As the options available to individuals increase, it is clear that the economics of health care are becoming more complicated than ever before.In this fully updated and revised edition of his leading text, Alan Sorkin provides a clear and comprehensive picture of the economics of health care in the United States and throughout the world. Designed to meet the needs of undergraduate and graduate students studying medicine and public health, Health Economics illuminates such pressing issues as the demand for health services and manpower, hospital programs, and expenditures and benefits. Sorkin explains why the United States, although consistently outspending all other countries on its health care system, nevertheless is below many other industrialized nations in infant mortality and life expectancy.Further, Sorkin examines the health economics of those developing countries where the majority of population growth will occur over the next decade, but where traditional means of financing health care are slight. As governments struggle with new financing mechanisms, the importance of this issue - one truly global in scope - cannot be overestimated. Sorkin's book is a valuable resource for understanding not only the current state of the economics of health but also the future of health care at home and abroad.
language: English
title: Health Economics: An Introduction
titlecomplete: Health Economics: An Introduction
publisher: Lexington Books