Health and Health Care 2010: The Forecast, the Challenge

The book was in excellent condition, like new. It took roughly 2 weeks to arrive, I was hoping for a bit quicker delivery.

Where is our nation's health-care system headed in the next decade? And how will we cope with the inevitable collision of rising costs, politics and human needs? This excellent book is one of the best overviews I've read on the topic. First published in late 2001, it's now available in an updated 2nd edition. It was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and compiled by the Institute for the Future. Even if you don't agree with all of the predictions, you will respect the honesty and thoroughness of the editors' work. Unlike works of social criticism and political diatribe, this volume avoids most partisan positions in favor of evidence-based conclusions on the following main topics: 1. America's changing demographic structure (not just age, but also ethnicity, socio-economic status and other variables) 2. The changing role of hospitals and related health-care institutions 3. Political and economic pressures on rising health-care costs 4. The rise of tiered health-care and insurance changes 5. New directions for health-care technologies, such as targeted pharmaceuticals and imaging 6. Patterns in health-care employment and professional training This well-written book is packed with valuable charts, graphs, source-notated facts and objective statistics from a wide variety of reliable sources. No matter what your position on each issue, you'll find this a volume a tremendous resource for analysis and discussion. Well done!

This is a very interesting prediction of what health care may hold for us this decade. I enjoyed reading forecasts of what the population will be like and their lifestyles, as well as buying habits. Health careers that will be booming were discussed as well as what medical advances will flourish. I found it interesting that this publication does not really predict a nursing shortage as everyone else is predicting. The discussion of insurance plan growth and changes was less interesting to this reader but necessary.