Building a Unified American Health Care System: A Blueprint for Comprehensive Reform

by Gilead I Lancaster, Jim Himes (Foreword by), David L. Katz (Foreword by)

Overview

A blueprint for comprehensive, science-based health care system reform.

Financial and political pressures on our health care system have negatively impacted individual care and the health system as a whole, an issue that has only become more acute because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Building a Unified American Health Care System, Gilead I Lancaster, MD, lays out a blueprint for comprehensive health care reform, proposing a unified system run by health care professionals—not politicians or commercial health insurance companies—that offers universal coverage and access.

Lancaster compares the current arguments for single payer versus commercial health insurance systems with arguments in the early 1900s for a central bank versus regional commercial banks. He then introduces a novel solution: the establishment of a National Medical Board similar to the Federal Reserve System that helped fix the American banking system over a century ago. Along with other innovations, a plan co-created by Lancaster dubbed EMBRACE (Expanding Medical and Behavioral Resources with Access to Care for Everyone) would involve creating a modern, evidence-based health care system, one offering universal coverage for basic needs while allowing for commercial insurance participation. Emphasizing the importance of separating health care from governmental and commercial pressures and incentives, Lancaster explains the need for comprehensive—rather than incremental—reform of the American health care system.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781421445885
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	03/28/2023
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.55(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gilead I Lancaster, MD, is a cardiologist and the director of non-invasive cardiology at Bridgeport Hospital and an associate clinical professor of medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Congressman Jim Himes
Foreword by David L. Katz, MD, MPH
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The American Healthcare System Disorder
2. The Ideal American Healthcare System—A Wish List
3. Healthcare and the Economy
4. Lessons from the Creation of the Federal Reserve System
5. How a National Medical Board Can Help the Current Healthcare System's Problems
6. EMBRACE: A Comprehensive Plan for Healthcare System Reform
7. The National Medical Board versus the Federal Reserve System
8. Impact
9. Cost Analysis
10. Implementation
11. Advocacy
12. Questions Answered
Index

What People are Saying About This

Tom Daschle

A thoughtful and compelling analysis of the complex, costly, and inefficient collage of public and private health care structures in the United States today. I enthusiastically applaud Dr. Lancaster's prescription for a new American health infrastructure and his innovative ideas on how we can create it. It should be mandatory reading for every policy-maker in the country.

Sandro Galea MD

Insightful and audacious, Gil Lancaster has given us a vision for healthcare reform with transformative potential. This is a book that thinks big.

Sherry Glied

Lancaster lays out an audacious vision for US health care that would insulate the system from politics and eliminate the current roles of public and private insurance. Engaging with his well-argued ideas will surely spur readers to reconsider the strengths and weaknesses of more mainstream proposals.

From the Publisher

Lancaster lays out an audacious vision for US health care that would insulate the system from politics and eliminate the current roles of public and private insurance. Engaging with his well-argued ideas will surely spur readers to reconsider the strengths and weaknesses of more mainstream proposals.
—Sherry Glied, coeditor of The Oxford Handbook of Health Economics

Insightful and audacious, Gil Lancaster has given us a vision for healthcare reform with transformative potential. This is a book that thinks big.
—Sandro Galea MD, DrPH, Dean, Boston University School of Public Health

A thoughtful and compelling analysis of the complex, costly, and inefficient collage of public and private health care structures in the United States today. I enthusiastically applaud Dr. Lancaster's prescription for a new American health infrastructure and his innovative ideas on how we can create it. It should be mandatory reading for every policy-maker in the country.
—Tom Daschle, former Senate Majority Leader