Differential Diagnoses

V. Dutton Paul

Description

Although the United States spends 16 percent of its gross domestic product on health care, more than 46 million people have no insurance coverage, while one in four Americans report difficulty paying for medical care. Indeed, the U.S. health care system, despite being the most expensive health care system in the world, ranked thirty-seventh in a comprehensive World Health Organization report. With health care spending only expected to increase, Americans are again debating new ideas for expanding coverage and cutting costs. According to the historian Paul V. Dutton, Americans should look to France, whose health care system captured the World Health Organization's number-one spot.In Differential Diagnoses, Dutton debunks a common misconception among Americans that European health care systems are essentially similar to each other and vastly different from U.S. health care. In fact, the Americans and the French both distrust "socialized medicine." Both peoples cherish patient choice, independent physicians, medical practice freedoms, and private insurers in a qualitatively different way than the Canadians, the British, and many others.The United States and France have struggled with the same ideals of liberty and equality, but one country followed a path that led to universal health insurance; the other embraced private insurers and has only guaranteed coverage for the elderly and the very poor. How has France reconciled the competing ideals of individual liberty and social equality to assure universal coverage while protecting patient and practitioner freedoms? What can Americans learn from the French experience, and what can the French learn from the U.S. example? Differential Diagnoses answers these questions by comparing how employers, labor unions, insurers, political groups, the state, and medical professionals have shaped their nations' health care systems from the early years of the twentieth century to the present day.

Sujets

• Médecine
• USA
• United States of America
• History of the Americas
• History of Europe
• États-Unis
• France

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801460470
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Differential Diagnoses

A VOLUME IN THE SERIES The Culture and Politics of Health Care Work edited by SUZANNE GORDON and SIOBAN NELSON

Assisted Living for Our Parents: A Son’s Journey  by Daniel Jay Baum From Silence to Voice: What Nurses Know and Must Communicate to the Public, Second Edition  by Bernice Buresh and Suzanne Gordon Nobody’s Home: Candid Reflections of a Nursing Home Aide  by Thomas Edward Gass Nursing against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and  Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care  by Suzanne Gordon The Complexities of Care: Nursing Reconsidered  edited by Suzanne Gordon and Sioban Nelson Nurses on the Move: Migration and the Global Health Care Economy  by Mireille Kingma Code Green: MoneyDriven Hospitals and the Dismantling of Nursing  by Dana Weinberg

Differential Diagnoses n A COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF HEALTH CARE PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES AND FRANCE n Paul V. Dutton

ILR Press an imprint of Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright 2007 by Paul V. Dutton

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2007 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Dutton, Paul V.  Differential diagnoses : a comparative history of health care problems and solutions in the United States and France / Paul V. Dutton.  p. cm.—(The culture and politics of health care work)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 978–0–8014–4512–5 (cloth : alk. paper)  1. Social medicine—United States—History—20th century. 2. Social medicine—France—History—20th century. 3. Medical policy—United States—History—20th century. 4. Medical policy— France—History—20th century. 5. Medical care—United States— History—20th century. 6. Medical care—France—History—20th century. 7. Insurance, Health—United States—History—20th century. 8. Insurance, Health—France—History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series.  RA418.3.U6D88 2007  362.1—dc22 2007010775

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Shelby

Differential diagnosis: the distinguishing between two or more diseases with similar symptoms by systematically comparing their signs and symptoms. Mosby’s Pocket Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health

CONTENTS

Preface ix

1 Ideals, Divergent Nations Common 1 2 Health Insurance and the Rise of PrivatePractice Medicine, 1915–193031 3 Health Security, the State, and Civil Society, 1930–194065 4 Challenges and Change during the Second World War, 1940–194597 5 Labor’s Quest for Health Security, 1945–1960112 6 The Choice of Public or Private, 1950–1970134 7 Cost Control Moves to the Fore, 1970–2000157 8 Hospitals and the Difficult Art of Health Care Reform, 1980–Present184 9 Les Jeux Sont Faits? 2000–Present212

Notes 223 Index 247

PREFACE

My first book examined the twentiethcentury develop ment of France’s social programs, including health care, retirement pensions, worker’s compensation, and family welfare. As a result of years of research in France, my family and I have had considerable direct experience with French health care, from the neighborhood nurse who gives us our flu shots to the staterun wellchild clinic that keeps our children healthy and vaccinated to the privatepractice physicians who treat our occasional ail ments. In the interest of full disclosure, the reader should know that our experiences have been overwhelmingly favorable. But so too has been our experience with U.S. health care. We are, after all, well insured and have the time and skills needed to negotiate the complexities of private U.S. medi cal coverage. Indeed, there is much to laud about health care and medical practitioners in both countries. This book, however, adopts a critical ap proach to health care through an international historical comparison. Only through an honest reckoning of the past will Americans and the French solve the truly daunting challenges that confront health care today. Despite all my research and experiences on both sides of the Atlantic, I owe a tremendous debt to my colleagues who specialize in the welfare state of the United States and in the history of its health care. Without their penetrating work this book would not have been possible. I am equally indebted to health policy scholars of diverse disciplines whose work on presentday problems in France and the United States permitted me to bring this history into the contemporary period. Specialists from all these groups will, no doubt, find omissions in my analysis. This is only natural. I only ask that they bear in mind the breadth of the comparative project at hand. This request is also aimed at my fellow Europeanists. To behold a comparative picture, I have sometimes had to simplify my language and condense details so as to be understood by as broad an audience as possible on both sides of the Atlantic.