Why Ration Health Care?: An International Study of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Public Sector Health Care in the USA (Civil Society) (Paperback)

Product Description
The National Health Service provides poor quality health care, compared with systems in other developed countries. In this book, Heinz Redwood makes detailed comparisons between the UK, France, Germany and the USA, in order to demonstrate just how wide the gap between Britain and the rest of the developed world has become. We spend less of our national wealth on health than countries at a similar level of economic development. In terms of numbers of doctors and nurses, the UK is closer to Mexico and Turkey than it is to France and Germany. As a result, we find ourselves denied the standard of care which people in other countries take for granted, or else we wait so long that some patients die before reaching the head of the queue. Although the solution to this problem is often assumed to be more government expenditure, Heinz Redwood shows that this may not be the whole answer. Whilst the UK government spends less per head of population on health than other Western states, the big gap is seen to be in private payment for health care. Because of the centralised structure of the NHS, with its almost total dependence on taxation for funding and abnormally low level of payments by patients, there is no opportunity to combine private insurance plans and co-payment with the system, as is the case elsewhere. As a result, healthcare in the UK lives in a storm-zone of its own creation. The problems are structural, and must be tackled at that level. Heinz Redwood argues that this will only be possible if we can break some taboos and ask why all care should be "free at the point of delivery", why there is no mix of public and private funds, and why patients have so little choice or control over their treatment. Other countries have achieved the ideal of the NHS - making sure that no sick person is denied care - without going down this route. Should dogma blind us to the lessons from overseas?

About the Author
Heinz Redwood works as an author and independent industry consultant. Trained as a scientist in England, he acquired commercial and marketing experience during four years in Thailand, importing and selling pharmaceutical and chemical products, and subsequently Worked for many years in the British pharmaceutical and chemical industry in commercial development and strategic planning.

Since 1982, Dr Redwood has worked as an independent international consultant, specialising in pharmaceutical and healthcare strategy at corporate and industry association level, public policy issues, and the interface between the two.

Dr Redwood was an expert witness in Ottawa at the Senate of Canada hearings on the repeal of compulsory licensing ('C-91') in 1993; and at the House of Commons Health Committee hearings on the National Health Service Drug Budget in London in 1994. He has spoken at pharmaceutical seminars and conferences in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Japan, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the USA.

Heinz Redwood's published studies of pharmaceutical and healthcare topics include: The Pharmaceutical Industry: Trends, Problems and Achievements, 1988; The Price of Health, Adam Smith Institute, 1989; Price Regulation and Pharmaceutical Research, 1993; New Horizons in India: The Consequences of Pharmaceutical Patent Protection, 1994; Brazil: The Future Impact of Pharmaceutical Patents, 1995; Pharmapolitics 2000: Key Issues for the Industry, 1997; 'The Pharmaceutical Price Regulation Scheme: International Perspectives and Millennial Change', in Should Pharmaceutical Prices be Regulated?, IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1997; 'Pharmaceutical cost containment and quality care', Pharmacoeconomics, 14, Suppl.1, 1998, 9-14; 'Pharmaceutical reference prices: how do they work in practice?' (with Professor Michael Dickson, University of South Carolina), Pharmacoeconomics, 14(5), November 1998, 471-479.

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