How do you go about choosing between health insurance plans . . . selecting a hospital. . .choosing a doctor? These are just some of the difficult decisions certain to have a profound impact on your physical, emotional, and financial well-being for years to come.

This comprehensive guide shows you how to make knowledgeable choices--how to get everything you require from our nation's $600 billion a year health care system. Health Care Services in the 1990s provides life-or-death information about ambulatory care, long-term care, and mental health services. Learn about the changing roles of physicians and dentists. . .insurance vs. pre-paid plans. . .how hospitals and physicians get current addresses, contact information, and toll-free telephone numbers of agencies capable of anwersing questions about specific needs and situations. health care system, and proceeds with the active role of the consumer as a partner in the system, protecting and promoting one's own health. The book also describes ways in which the systeM's resources can be most advantageous when the consumer is not in bad health. The book progresses with a detailed exploration of the major components of the system, and analyzes functions such as ambulatory care, the choice of a hospital and its services, long term care, the nursing home, and mental health services. The major providers of care (the physicians, dentists, and other relevant providers) and how to work with them are discussed. Consumer approaches to health insurance, governmental health care programs, and financial considerations are also addressed. The quality of health care from the consumer viewpoint and protection of consumer rights inherent in the system is another aspect covered in this valuable book. Alternatives to the traditional health care system are also provided.

This multidisciplinary book provides new insights and hope for sustainable prosperity given recent developments in economics - but only if swift and strong actions consistent with Earth's biophysical limits and principles of justice are universally taken. It is one thing to put limits on resource throughput and waste generation to conform with the ecosphere's biocapacity. It is another thing to efficiently allocate a sustainable rate of resource throughput and ensure it is equitably distributed in the form of final goods and services. While the separate but interdependent decisions regarding throughput, distribution, and allocation are the essence of ecological economics, dealing with them in a world that needs to cure its growth addiction requires a realistic understanding of macroeconomics and the fiscal capacity of currency-issuing central governments. Sustainable prosperity demands that we harness this understanding to carefully regulate the rate of resource throughput and manipulate macroeconomic outcomes to facilitate human flourishing. The book begins by outlining humanity's current predicament of gross ecological overshoot and laments the half-century of missed opportunities since The Limits to Growth (1972). What was once economic growth has become, in many high-income countries, uneconomic growth (additional costs exceeding additional benefits), which is no longer advancing wellbeing. Meanwhile, low-income nations need a dose of efficient and equitable growth to escape poverty while protecting their environments and the global commons. The book argues for a synthesis of our increasing knowledge of the ecosphere's limited carrying capacity and the power of governments to harness, transform, and distribute resources for the common good. Central to this synthesis must be a correct understanding of the difference between financial constraints and real resource constraints. While the latter apply to everyone, the former do not apply to currency-issuing central governments, which have much more capacity for corrective action than mainstream thinking perceives. The book joins the growing chorus of authoritative voices calling for a complete overhaul of the dominant economic system. We conclude with policy recommendations based on a new economics that, if implemented, would come close to guaranteeing a sustainable and prosperous future. Upon reading this book, at least one thing should be crystal clear: business as usual is not a viable option.

How do you go about choosing between health insurance plans . . . selecting a hospital. . .choosing a doctor? These are just some of the difficult decisions certain to have a profound impact on your physical, emotional, and financial well-being for years to come.

This comprehensive guide shows you how to make knowledgeable choices--how to get everything you require from our nation's $600 billion a year health care system. Health Care Services in the 1990s provides life-or-death information about ambulatory care, long-term care, and mental health services. Learn about the changing roles of physicians and dentists. . .insurance vs. pre-paid plans. . .how hospitals and physicians get current addresses, contact information, and toll-free telephone numbers of agencies capable of anwersing questions about specific needs and situations. health care system, and proceeds with the active role of the consumer as a partner in the system, protecting and promoting one's own health. The book also describes ways in which the systeM's resources can be most advantageous when the consumer is not in bad health. The book progresses with a detailed exploration of the major components of the system, and analyzes functions such as ambulatory care, the choice of a hospital and its services, long term care, the nursing home, and mental health services. The major providers of care (the physicians, dentists, and other relevant providers) and how to work with them are discussed. Consumer approaches to health insurance, governmental health care programs, and financial considerations are also addressed. The quality of health care from the consumer viewpoint and protection of consumer rights inherent in the system is another aspect covered in this valuable book. Alternatives to the traditional health care system are also provided.