Inescapable Decisions: The Imperatives of Health Reform

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Transaction Publishers - 296 pages

"Inescapable Decisions" examines the disarray in the American health care system and proposes major corrective strategies. Mechanic shows that the high-technology interventionist type of medicine commonly practiced in the United States has lost its sense of priorities and balance. Expensive and sometimes dangerous procedures of unknown efficacy are used excessively and often inappropriately, while many basic preventive and primary care services remain unavailable to those who need them the most. This incredibly complex system of care operates in an environment of heavy-landed rules and regulations and enormous waste of resources.

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Contents

The American Medical Care System
3
Sources of Countervailing Power in Medicine
53
Professional Judgment and the Rationing of Medical Care
69
Conceptions of Health
101
Promoting Health and Independence
119
Socioeconomic Status and Health
137
Adolescents at Risk
153
Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill Efforts for Inclusion
165
Health Care for an Aging Population
213
Inescapable Decisions
229
Medical Sociology Some Tensions between Theory Method and Substance
249
The Role of Sociology in Health Affairs
275
Index
291
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