ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book provides selected international trends in cost-containment strategies and brings the patient experience more dramatically into international comparison. It examines the American health care system, a benchmark for cost-containment efforts. The next cluster of country histories is of those countries that have some form of mandated universal insurance: Canada, France, Germany, Australia, and Japan. These are followed by the national health care systems, first in the liberal democracies: Sweden, New Zealand, and Britain; then those in several socialist states: USSR, Hungary, and the People's Republic of China. Huge national debt, oil crises, weak economic growth, the unwillingness to raise taxes, and the fact that health care spending has been rising faster than the inflation rate have led to the need to reduce public spending and change the government's role in health care systems.
