This book concerns itself with the key question: how to improve health in a cost effective and politically acceptable way. What makes people healthy? Why are the poor less healthy than the rich? Why do some countries have a better health record than others? An Introduction to Health is divided into four parts comprising the determinants of health, health service planning, health service financing, and controlling costs and securing user-friendly services.

First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book concerns itself with the key question: how to improve health in a cost effective and politically acceptable way. What makes people healthy? Why are the poor less healthy than the rich? Why do some countries have a better health record than others? An Introduction to Health is divided into four parts comprising the determinants of health, health service planning, health service financing, and controlling costs and securing user-friendly services.

First Published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Originally published in 1956, as number 17 in the Occasional Papers of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research series, this book presents an investigation into the cost of the National Health Service. Using the technique of 'social accounting', the text was written 'to trace for the National Health Service as a whole in England and Wales, and for each of its main branches, the changes in factor cost and in the amount of resources absorbed since the Service was established'. Appendices are included and numerous tables are incorporated throughout. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in socio-economic history and the development of the National Health Service.

In view of the continuing preoccupation of all industrialized countries with the rising share of national resources devoted to health care, it is valuable to compare the fmanc ing and breakdown of health care expenditure on an international basis. How far should public spending on health care be regarded as a capital investment in the improvement of the health of the population and how far as subsidies to individual consumption? This question is of major importance to policy makers, including the me dical profession, politicians, employers, social security officials as well as to the public at large. In order to obtain some insight into the incentive structures enhancing competition among suppliers which have been built into the health care delivery systems in the various countries, the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Public Health at St. Gall, in close co operation with the Institute of Insurance Economics and the Institute of Public Finance and Fiscal Law, both afftliated with the Saint Gall Graduate School of Economics, Business and Public Administration, initiated an international seminar held at Wolfsberg, Switzerland, 20-23 March 1979. The purposes of the Seminar were: 1. to review present experience on the development of health care costs and their financing - particularly the role of health insurance and the institutional relationships between public illd private health insurance policies; 2."