Understanding Health Policy, Fifth Edition (LANGE Clinical Medicine)

Understanding Health Policy, Fifth Edition (LANGE Clinical Medicine) Features

Additional Understanding Health Policy, Fifth Edition (LANGE Clinical Medicine) Information

An engaging and clinically applicable work on the principles and structure of the U.S. healthcare system

A Doody's Core Title ESSENTIAL PURCHASE!

"Eminently readable...Anyone wanting to gain insight into the forces that shaping health policy and the future of health care will appreciate this book."--Critical Care Nurse Magazine

Understanding Health Policy is the best-written, most informative book available on the subject--and it's the #1 choice for healthcare students and professionals alike. The authors carefully weave key principles, descriptions, and concrete examples into chapters that make important health policy issues both interesting and understandable.

Fully updated to reflect current issues in the ever-changing world of healthcare, the newest edition addresses all the topics that affect you most, from the structure and organization of the industry to issues regarding government and private insurance, to access to healthcare.

Everything you need to understand how the healthcare system works - and your role in it:

What Customers Say About Understanding Health Policy, Fifth Edition (LANGE Clinical Medicine):

This was a required reading, and well worth it. It helped to clarify many ideas on health policy and the difficulties of each veiwpoint. Great summary on other types of healthcare systems around the world. I'm keeping this as a board review/reference book for myself.

The authors use many "vignettes" throughout the text to illustrate their points as well, but they tend to cloud reason because they are often emotionally charged. While there is a good deal to be learned in terms of information, you have to be careful to separate the authors' opinions from facts practically throughout. I am reading this book for a course I am currently taking. There are many ways in which liberal ideology insinuates itself throughout the text. The authors are at least kind enough to warn the reader at the outset that they "believe that health care should be a right enjoyed equally by everyone". In Chapter 13, which is on ethics, they advocate the idea of "distributive justice". Fine if you already have a liberal point of view, I suppose, but annoying to the student trying to separate fact from liberal-oriented opinion. I do not recommend this book.

I teach healthcare policy and am currently using this text. It also has questions keyed to each chapter for assignment use. It does a great job covering the important issues. It's quite readable, as a new edition very topical and, through the use of vignettes, humanizes the consequences of policy decisions. It is not an academic text and I am supplementing with articles (many of which can be found in the excellent references section following the chapters) as well as articles from news sources. Recommend highly.

An excellent explanation of the current status of the American health care issues. Up to date data is an extra.

Very concise overview of health policy, which makes it a perfect read for the many US med students who are only interested in a superficial understanding of complex social processes.