The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 established a voluntary, outpatient prescription drug benefit under Medicare Part D, effective January 1, 2006. Medicare Part D provides coverage through private prescription drug plans (PDPs) that offer only drug coverage, or through Medicare Advantage (MA) prescription drug plans (MA-PDs) that offer coverage as part of broader, managed care plans. Private drug plans participating in Part D bear some financial risk, though federal subsidies cover most program costs in an effort to encourage participation and keep benefits affordable. This book discusses the prescription drug benefit of Medicare Part D. It also examines practices for promoting prescription drug program integrity, and the extent that CMS's oversight of Medicare Part D program integrity, including the program integrity contractors, reflects these practices.

Why does US health care have such high costs and poor outcomes? Dr. David S. Guzick offers this critique of the American health care industry and argues that it could work more effectively by rebalancing care, cost, and access. For decades, the United States has been faced with a puzzling problem: Despite spending much more money per capita on health care than any other developed nation, its population suffers from notoriously poorer health. In comparison with 10 other high-income nations, in fact, the US has the lowest life expectancy at birth, the highest rates of infant and neonatal mortality, and the most inequitable access to physicians when adjusted for need. In An Introduction to the US Health Care Industry, Dr. David S. Guzick takes an in-depth look at this troubling issue. Bringing to bear his unique background as a physician, economist, former University of Rochester medical school dean, and former president of the University of Florida Health System, Dr. Guzick shows that what we commonly refer to as the US health care "system" is actually an industry forged by a unique collection of self-interested and disjointed stakeholders. He argues that the assumptions underlying well-functioning markets do not align with health care. The resulting market imperfections, combined with entrenched industry stakeholders, have led to a significant imbalance of care, cost, and access. Using a nontechnical framework, Dr. Guzick introduces readers to the economic principles behind the function-and dysfunction-of our health care industry. He shows how the market-based approach could be expected to remedy these problems while detailing the realities of imperfections, regulations, and wealth inequality on those functions. He also analyzes how this industry developed, presenting the conceptual underpinnings of the health care industry while detailing its history and tracing the creation and entrenchment of the current federation of key stakeholders-government, insurance companies, hospitals, doctors, employers, and drug and device manufacturers. In the final section of the book, Dr. Guzick looks to the future, describing the prevention, innovation, and alternative financing models that could help to rebalance the priorities of care, cost, and access that Americans need. An online supplement on COVID-19 is available, as is a discussion guide for instructors. To access this supplemental material, please visit www.jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu.

The process of food inspection relies on an inspector's understanding of the intrinsic hazards associated with individual foods. Whereas spoilage can usually be determined through a simple organoleptic assessment, the judgment of whether a food is fit for human consumption requires an evaluation of health hazards, many of which may not be apparent through physical assessment. Instead the inspector must analyse and integrate scientific and handling information to evaluate the potential health risk. Adulteration of foods is also becoming an increasing problem, and the complexity of the food supply chain requires an understanding of risk points to allow targeted inspection and assessment. Food Safety and Inspection: An Introduction focuses on food categories and describes common hazards associated with each, using published peer-reviewed research to explain and evaluate the health risk. It is a practical textbook designed to support the role of food inspection in a modern food industry. There are seven chapters looking at specific aspects of food safety, including a chapter on fraud and adulteration. This book summarises relevant published research to provide a scientific context for specific food safety issues, and is an essential read for anyone interested in becoming a food inspector.

Methamphetamine: A Love Story presents an insider's view of the world of methamphetamine based on the life stories of thirty-three adults formerly immersed in using, dealing, and manufacturing meth in rural Oklahoma. Using a respectful tone towards her subjects, Shukla illuminates their often decades-long love affair with the drug, the attractions of the lifestyle, the eventual unsustainability of it, and the challenges of exiting the life. These personal stories reveal how and why people with limited economic means and inadequate resources become entrapped in the drug epidemic, while challenging longstanding societal views about addiction, drugs, drug policy, and public health.

Why do law reforms spread around the world in waves? In the dominant account of diffusion through technocracy, international networks of elites develop orthodox policy solutions and transplant these across countries without regard for the wishes of ordinary citizens. But this account overlooks a critical factor: in democracies, reforms must win the support of politicians, voters, and interest groups. This book claims that laws spread across countries in very public and politicized ways, and develops a theory of diffusion through democracy. I argue that politicians choose to follow certain international models to win domestic elections, and to persuade skeptical voters that their ideas are not radical, ill-thought-out experiments, but mainstream, tried-and-true solutions. This book shows how international models generated domestic support for health, family, and employment law reforms across rich democracies. Information that international organizations have endorsed certain reforms or that foreign countries have adopted them is valuable to voters. Public opinion experiments show that even Americans respond positively to this information. Case studies of election campaigns and legislative debates demonstrate that politicians with diverse ideologies reference international models strategically, and focus on the few international organizations and countries familiar to voters. Data on policy adoption from many rich democracies document that governments follow international organization templates and imitate the policy choices of countries heavily covered in national media and familiar to voters. Benchmarks from Abroad provides a direct defense to a major criticism international organizations and networks face: that they conflict with domestic democracy. Even presumptively weak international efforts, such as the development of soft law and best practices, can increase voter support for major reforms. Instead, international and European Union negotiations to establish binding legal obligations can be costly and protracted, resulting in "too little, too late. " However, the book also explains how electoral calculations do not favor the spread of successful policies that happen to originate in small and remote states.

Statutory Nuisance: Law and Practice offers a comprehensive resource for practitioners in the legal and environmental health professions, guiding the reader through the complex practical and legal issues associated with statutory nuisance. It focuses on the problems that local authorities face in enforcing this area, as well as the issues facing those advising defendants. This title examines the role, powers, and duties of the local authorities, and the problems associated with drafting abatement notices and with the prosecution of nuisances. It also covers defenses and proceedings brought by private individuals against neighbors and local authority landlords.
The book analyses what happens in court, considering in detail the procedure and requirements in appeals against notices and in prosecutions, as well as the grounds for bringing further appeals and judicial review. It covers important recent decisions and key legislation.
This new edition provides an update on the various types of statutory nuisance, additional chapters on new forms of statutory nuisance, and expanded material on adjacent areas of enforcement to statutory nuisance, notably those arising from the Anti-Social Behaviour agenda.

There is an understandable tendency or desire to attribute blame when patients are harmed by their own healthcare. However, many cases of iatrogenic harm involve little or no moral culpability. Even when blame is justified, an undue focus on one individual often deflects attention from other important factors within the inherent complexity of modern healthcare. This revised second edition advocates a rethinking of accountability in healthcare based on science, the principles of a just culture, and novel therapeutic legal processes. Updated to include many recent relevant events, including the Keystone Project in the USA and the Mid Staffordshire scandal in the UK, this book considers how the concepts of a just culture have been successfully implemented so far, and makes recommendations for best practice. This book will be of interest to anyone concerned with patient safety, medical law and the regulation of healthcare.

This book covers the design, implementation, and auditing of structured occupational health and safety management systems (SMS), sometimes referred to as safety programs. Every workplace has a form of SMS in place as required by safety regulations and laws. The Design, Implementation, and Audit of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems describes some of the elements that constitute an SMS, the implementation process, and the auditing of the conformance to standards. It covers more than 60 processes, programs, or standards of a system, and gives important background information on each element. Guidelines and examples show how to design and implement the risk-based processes, programs and standards, and how to audit them against standards. The text is based on actual SMS implementation experiences across a wide range of industries. It offers a roadmap to any organization which has no structured SMS. It will guide them through the process of upgrading their health and safety processes to conform to local and international standards. It will lead them away from relying on reactive safety measures such as injury rates, to proactive actions which are measured by the audit of the system. Features Covers more than 60 elements of a safety management system (SMS) Provides practical examples of how to design, implement, and audit a structured SMS Based on actual SMS implementation experience across a wide range of industries Presents the integration of an SMS into the day-to-day functions of the organization

This book examines questions of medical accountability and ethics. It analyses how the criminal justice system regulates health care practice, and to what extent it can and should be used as a tool to resolve ethical conflict in health care. For most of the twentieth century, criminal courts were engaged in matters relating to medicine principally as a forum to resolve ethical controversies over the sanctity of life. However, the judiciary approached this function with reluctance and a marked tendency to defer to the medical profession to define what constituted ethical, and thus lawful, conduct. However, over the past 25 years, criminal courts have increasingly been drawn into these types of question, and the criminal law has become a major actor in the resolution of ethical conflict. The trend to prosecute for aberrant professional conduct or medical malpractice and the role of the criminal process in medicine has been analytically neglected in the UK. There is scant literature addressing the appropriate boundaries of the criminal process in resolving ethical conflict, the theoretical legal analysis of the law's relationship with health care, or the practical impact of the criminal justice system on professionals and the delivery of health care in the UK. This volume addresses these issues via a combination of theoretical analyses and key case studies, drawing on the experiences of other carefully selected jurisdictions. It places a particular emphasis on the appropriateness of the involvement of the criminal justice system in health care, the limitations of this developing trend, and solutions to the problems it throws up. The book takes euthanasia as a primary example of the issues raised by the intersection of health care and the criminal law, and questions whether health care issues appropriately fall within the remit of the criminal justice system.

The NHS has undergone substantial reform and investment since 1980, yet demand for care still exceeds supply and difficult choices remain between patients. Why is this so? On what basis should these decisions be made and by whom? As patients become 'consumers' of care, Who Should We Treat? puts patients' rights into their political, economic, and managerial perspectives to consider one of the most pressing problems in contemporary society.

The goal of improving public health involves the use of different tools, with the law being one way to influence the activities of institutions and individuals. Of the regulatory mechanisms afforded by law to achieve this end, criminal law remains a perennial mechanism to delimit the scope of individual and group conduct. Utilising criminal law may promote or hinder public health goals, and its use raises a number of complex questions that merit exploration. This examination of the interface between criminal law and public health brings together international experts from a variety of disciplines, including law, criminology, public health, philosophy and health policy, in order to examine the theoretical and practical implications of using criminal law to improve public health.

This thought-provoking book draws together research from genetics, anthropology, psychology and the social sciences to show that widespread assumptions about the inevitability of human violence are almost entirely a collection of myths. While violence has been a recurring feature of human life, there is no reason to suppose that it is inherent in 'human nature'. On the contrary, patterns of aggressive behaviour are largely learned through experience and even those individuals who have often acted violently can learn to change. Rejecting the speculations of much contemporary writing about human aggression, Violence Rewired presents an evidence-based alternative: a multi-level model of action to reduce violence at both individual and collective levels, linked to public health initiatives developed by the World Health Organization. If humanity is to survive the challenges it faces, a more realistic appraisal of ourselves and our basic tendencies is an indispensable part of the solution.