Main description:

An examination of the moral principles and institutional arrangements that will be needed to drive any new health care reform inititive.

Health care reform has been stalled since the Clinton health care initiative, but the political difficulties internal to that initiative and the ethical problems that provoked it -- of cost, coverage, and overall fairness, for example -- have only gotten worse. This collection examines the moral principles that must underlie any new reform initiative and the processes of democratic decision-making essential to successful reform.
This volume provides careful analyses that will allow the reader to short-circuit the mythmaking, polemics, and distortions that have too often characterized public discussion of health care reform. Its aim is to provide the moral foundations and institutional arrangements needed to drive any new health care initiative and so to stimulate a reasoned discussion before the next inevitable round of reform efforts.

Foreword by Thomas H. Murray.
Contributors: HowardBrody, Norman Daniels, Theodore Marmor, Tobie H. Olsan, Uwe E. Reinhardt, Gerd Richter, Rory B. Weiner, Lawrence W. White

Wade L. Robison is the Ezra A. Hale Professor in Applied Ethics at the Rochester Institute of Technology and recipient of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Prize for Social Science and Public Policy for his book Decisions in Doubt: The Environment and Public Policy.
Timothy H. Engstroem is Professor of Philosophy at the Rochester Institute of Technology and recipient of the Eisenhart Award for Outstanding Teaching.

Contents:

Foreword by Thomas H. Murray
Introduction: The Problems of Health Care Reform - Timothy Engstrom and Wade L. Robison
The Moral Crisis in Health Care - Wade L. Robison
Ethics, Justice, and Health Reform - Howard Brody
A Social Contract for Twenty-First Century Health Care: Three-Tier Health Care with Bounty Hunting - Uwe E. Reinhardt
Corporatization of Health Care - Lawrence W. White
"We Can't Be Nurses Anymore": The Loss of Community Health Nurses' Personhood in Market-Driven Health Care - Tobie H. Olsan
Politics of Medical Care Reform in Mature Welfare States: What Are America's Prospects Now? - Theodore Marmor
Citizens and Customers: Establishing the Ethical Foundations of the German and U.S. Health Care Systems - Timothy Engstrom
Citizens and Customers: Establishing the Ethical Foundations of the German and U.S. Health Care Systems - Gerd Richter
Preparing for the Next Health Care Reform: Notes for an Interim Ethic - Larry R. Churchill
A Cooperative Beneficence Approach to Health Care Reform - Rory B. Weiner
Fairness and National Health Care Reform - Norman Daniels
Conclusion: Prospects for Reform - Timothy Engstrom and Wade L. Robison