The Complete Course on Health Policy

Access to Health Care

– Financial barriers to health care.
– Nonfinancial barriers to healthcare.
– The relation between health care and health status.
– Conclusion.

Reimbursing Health Care Providers

• Units of payment.
• Methods of physician payment.
• Methods of hospital payment.
• Conclusion.

How Health Care is Organized: “Health Delivery Systems”

• The traditional structure of medical care.
• The seeds of new medical care structures.
• First-generation health maintenance organizations and vertical integration: The Kaiser-Permanente Medical Care program.
• Second-Generation Health Maintenance Organizations and “Virtual Integration”: Network Model HMOs, Independent Practice Associations, and Integrated Medical Groups.
• Comparing Vertically and Virtually Integrated Models.
• Accountable Care Organizations.
• From Medical Homes to Medical Neighbourhoods.

Cost Control

• Health Care Costs and Health Outcomes.
• Cost Control Strategies.
• Mechanisms for Controlling Costs
• Financing Controls.
• Reimbursement Controls.

Quality of Health Care

• The Components of High-Quality Care.
• Proposals for Improving Quality.
• Where Does Malpractice Reform Fit in?
   

Medical Ethics and Rationing of Health Care

• Principles of Medical Ethics.
• Ethical Dilemmas, Old and New.
• What Is Rationing?
• Commodity Scarcity: The Case of Organ Transplants.
• Fiscal Scarcity and Resource Allocation.
• The Relationship of Rationing to Cost Control.
• Rationing by Medical Effectiveness.
• A Basic Level of Guaranteed Medical Benefits.
• The Ethics of Health Care Financing.
• Who Allocates Health Care Resources?

Health Care Reform and National Health Insurance

• Government-Financed National Health Insurance.
• The Employer-Mandate Model of National Health Insurance.
• The Individual-Mandate Model of National Health Insurance.
• Secondary Features of National Health Insurance Plans.