ABSTRACT
This book is devoted to issues relating to health care delivery, finance, and policy on an international scale. The international viewpoint provided within this text is intended to broaden the perspective of students, policymakers, lawmakers, health care providers, and administrators who assume that the health-related problems they are confronted with are somehow unique to their particular culture or market. There is little doubt that cultural, social, economic, and historical factors significantly shape health care policy and provision within any given nation. Nevertheless, it must be recognized that within the millennium health care will increasingly become an integral component of a global market in which nations compete for health-related technology, pharmaceuticals, human resources, programs and services, and financing (Lazarus, 1999; Medical Marketing and Media, 1999; Velasquez and Boulet, 1999).
