Praise for the 3-volume second edition of The Social Medicine Reader:
“A superb collection of essays that illuminate the role of medicine in modern society. Students and general readers are not likely to find anything better.”—Arnold S. Relman, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Praise for the first edition:
“This reviewer strongly recommends The Social Medicine Reader to the attention of medical educators.”—Samuel W. Bloom, JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association

Volume 3:

Over the past four decades the American health care system has witnessed dramatic changes in private health insurance, campaigns to enact national health insurance, and the rise (and perhaps fall) of managed care. Bringing together seventeen pieces new to this second edition of The Social Medicine Reader and four pieces from the first edition, Health Policy, Markets, and Medicine draws on a broad range of disciplinary perspectives—including political science, economics, history, and bioethics—to consider changes in health care and the future of U.S. health policy. Contributors analyze the historical and moral foundation of today’s policy debates, examine why health care spending is so hard to control in the United States, and explain the political dynamics of Medicare and Medicaid. Selections address the rise of managed care, its impact on patients and physicians, and the ethical implications of applying a business ethos to medical care; they also compare the U.S. health care system to the systems in European countries, Canada, and Japan. Additional readings probe contemporary policy issues, including the emergence of consumer-driven health care, efforts to move quality of care to the top of the policy agenda, and the implications of the aging of America for public policy.

Contributors: Henry J. Aaron, Drew E. Altman, George J. Annas, Robert H. Binstock, Thomas Bodenheimer, Troyen A. Brennan, Robert H. Brook, Lawrence D. Brown, Daniel Callahan, Jafna L. Cox, Victor R. Fuchs, Kevin Grumbach, Rudolf Klein, Robert Kuttner, Larry Levitt, Donald L. Madison, Wendy K. Mariner, Elizabeth A. McGlynn, Jonathan Oberlander, Geov Parrish, Sharon Redmayne, Uwe E. Reinhardt, Michael S. Sparer, Deborah Stone

Jonathan Oberlander is an associate professor of social medicine and an adjunct associate professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Larry R. Churchill is Professor of and Chair of the Department of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of Self-Interest and Universal Health Care: Why Well-Insured Americans Should Support Coverage for Everyone and Rationing Health Care in America: Perceptions and Principles of Justice.

Sue E. Estroff is Professor of Social Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is the author of Making It Crazy: An Ethnography of Psychiatric Clients in an American Community.

Gail E. Henderson, Associate Professor of Social Medicine and Adjunct Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of The Chinese Hospital: A Socialist Work Unit.

Nancy M. P. King, Associate Professor of Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is the author of Making Sense of Advance Directives.

Ronald P. Strauss is Professor of Dental Ecology and Social Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is author of numerous articles on social and ethical issues in the care of chronic illness.