The Economics of US Health Care Policy

Exploring the US health care system, this book sets out the case for its reform. Phelps and Parente trace the foundations for today’s system. They show how distortions in the incentives facing participants in the health care market could be corrected in order to achieve lower costs, higher quality of care, more patient safety, and more efficient use of scarce health care resources. This book proposes fundamental changes in the US health care system. These include: changes to US tax law regarding employer paid health insurance; a series of alterations in the structure of Medicare and Medicaid; an improvement to chronic disease care and electronic health records.