As countries confront new health care challenges in the 21st century, their health care systems reflect the problems and political settlements of an earlier age. Meeting these new challenges requires reform of existing health care system arrangements while reconciling the goals of equitable access to quality care at an affordable price. This book compares health care reforms in industrialized nations and the Global South to uncover the similarities and differences in their problems and solutions. It examines the struggle over the Affordable Care Act and its alternatives in the United States, major health care reforms in Germany in the new century, and South Africa's efforts to combat AIDS and construct a comprehensive health care system for all. These particular reforms reflect the underlying configuration of politics in each country.

Product Description: Are advanced industrialized countries converging on a market response to reform their systems of social protection? By comparing the health care reform experiences of Britain, Germany, and the United States in the 1990s, Susan Giaimo explores how countries pursue diverse policy responses and how such variations reflect distinctive institutions, actors, and reform politics in each country...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)