Whitepaper: Health Reform - The Debate Goes Public
Contributed by Economist Intelligence Unit -
Published 09 October 2009
A new report from the Economist Intelligence Unit highlights the dilemmas faced by policymakers seeking to implement healthcare reform.
Healthcare systems are complex, enormous and unwieldy, whether they are state-managed monoliths such as the UK’s, or dominated by the private insurance sector, as in the US. They are traditionally slow to adapt to change, but now those immovable objects are being forced to confront not just one, but several irresistible forces: demographic (ageing populations), epidemiological (increasing incidence of chronic diseases), technological (more expensive drugs and technologies) and economic (global recession, high public debt, smaller pensions).
The price for ignoring these forces could be disastrous—the US president, Barack Obama, has warned that if the US healthcare system is allowed to continue down its present course, it will bankrupt the entire country.
Try telling the end-users of healthcare about these pressures, and they will be nonplussed. In a major survey for this report, the Economist Intelligence Unit set out to ascertain just what the citizens in four large economies—the US, UK, Germany and India—think about their healthcare systems. The findings, detailed within Health Reform: The Debate Goes Public clearly shows the kinds of dilemmas faced by healthcare policymakers who seek to implement reforms. This report is the third in a four-part series commissioned by Philips.
Download the full report.
To see how your opinions on the healthcare reform measure up to the nearly 1,600 who participated in this study worldwide, take the survey.
Copyright © The Economist Group Limited 2009. All rights reserved.
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