Description
Book SynopsisWritten for nonexperts, this is a brisk, engaging history of American healthcare from the 1960s to the impact of the Affordable Care Act in the 2010s.
Unaffordable covers, in a conversational style punctuated by apt examples, topics ranging from health insurance, pharmaceutical pricing, and physician training to health maintenance organizations and hospital networks.
Trade ReviewEngel's clear storyline and simple (but not simplistic) analysis make sense of a topic of mind-boggling complexity. Invaluable."
- David Herzberg, author of Happy Pills in America
"A comprehensive, readable, balanced examination of the costs of the crazy quilt healthcare 'system' that has evolved in the United States over five decades." - Ronald L. Numbers, coeditor of Sickness and Health in America
“Engel, author of four previous books on healthcare policy, presents a deeply researched, authoritative, and rigorous account of healthcare’s flaws. . . . An important, concise appraisal of the current situation and of the way that America got here.”—Foreword ReviewsTable of Contents
- Timeline of Major Federal Legislation
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- Introduction
- 1 A System Run Amok
- 2 Medical Free Markets
- 3 Reining in the Excess
- 4 The Lure of Profits
- 5 Efforts to Rationalize
- 6 HillaryCare
- 7 Managing Care
- 8 Quantity and Quality
- 9 Ethical Wrangling
- 10 Medicare and Medicaid: Evolving Government Programs
- 11 (Un)Affordable Care
- 12 Afterword
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- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Index
