Critical Challenges for Health Care Reform in Europe (State of Health Series)

A selection of 17 revised background papers commissioned by the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe as part of an analysis of the challenges confronting national health policy decision makers in the second half of the 1990s. They contributed to policy recommendations made at the 1996 WHO conference in Ljubljana. They explore such avenues as macroeconomic constraints and health challenges, demand-side strategies such as balancing competition and solidarity in financing health care, and patient cost sharing; supply- side strategies such as contracting models and provider competition, and regulating expenditures on medicines; the roles of the state, citizens, and society; and implementing reform. A conclusion assesses the evidence presented. Distributed in the US by Taylor and Francis. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.