Slow Expansion of Coverage, Altman Part 2-3

With the start of part two in the book "Power, Politics, and Universal Health Care", by Altman begins with chapter four. Chapter four focuses on free hospital care for the poor. While talking about logistics, Altman talks about many great political figure heads and leaders that had sort of a tug of war when concerning adequate hospital facilities and free hospital health care. The most prominent thing that was discussed in chapter four was the Hill-Burton Program, which gave power to the states to help make their hospitals well equipped. Chapter five is when he book starts getting into the details of Medicare and the controversies that it brought along, politically and socially. 1958 was the year when health care hearings for the elderly started to be heard in Congress. Throughout chapter six and seven, Altman focuses on Medicare and is rather repetitive because not a lot of progress was made, but he includes a lot of stories and advances that were made in the political sphere. Chapter eight goes into detail about Medicare still, but mainly on the prescription drug benefit. George W. Bush pushed for this concept for the first two years of his administration, which was viewed as strange because he was a conservative Republican. Part three mainly focusses on costs, which in my mind when anybody ever says health care my first thought is money. I feel like most other people I associate with at least associate cost and money with health care before they consider anything else. Part two and three of this book talk about politics mainly concerning issues and the advances they made with certain issues, which I find interesting but its rather tedious to remember and write about specifically.

Unsuccessful Health Care Proposals: Altman Part 1

   I have to say that this book was not what I expected when I began to read it. It has much, much more political background and political ideas throughout part one.
   To start off chapter one, Altman and Shactman talk about the secret church meeting. This secret meeting included Altman, who was the deputy assistant excretory for planning and evaluation--health, and some of his colleagues. The meeting also included Stan Jones, Bill Fullerton, and a few others. The reason why I listed the people that attended the meeting is because they all represented prominent politicians and this "secret meeting" shows the backstage part of politics.
   The whole purpose of part one, and I'm guessing the rest of the book is the health care system, and in particular what kind of health care bills have been constructed. Throughout part one, the book discusses Nixon's plan, Kennedy's plan, and Clinton's plan. Part one also spends a lot of time talking about different IGO's and organization that go into the healthcare system, and also committees that are governmental that are needed to get healthcare systems passed or even glanced at.
   Since I am a political science major I would have to say that this book is my favorite by far, and there are many things that I could go into that I read in part one but i touched on a few that were interesting to me.

Hoffman Ch.6-Epilogue

Starting with chapter six, Hoffman discusses Entitlements such as medicare and medicaid. the chapter itself talks about a lot of logistics and details, but the main theme I could draw from this chapter and the topics discussed was that it needs to be clearly stated and realized by Americans is that entailments are not rights. I could take this blog post and list all the specifics that are mentioned throughout some of the chapters, but for chapters six through seven and some of the others, I feel like health care and entitlements are the main focuses. The government involvement for all of these medical organizations is what makes them so controversial and all the money that is spent and lost with these organizations. But the other controversies come into play because these programs help people and the moral/American side of people see that as a reason to support them, but its more than that. Chapter eight discusses emergency rooms and epidemics. The cost is a major theme throughout this chapter and also epidemics such as AIDs epidemic in 1981 that terrified the American people. In chapter nine discusses how healthcare is unsteady and there have been many reforms and changes that political leaders have tried to make and healthcare is still controversial and unsteady.