Book contents
- Intimations of Mortality
- Intimations of Mortality
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Conundrum
- 2 The US Health Care ‘System’
- 3 Autonomy and Informed Consent in the Real World
- 4 The Denial of Death and Its Sequelae
- 5 Disorders of Consciousness and the Meaning of Life
- 6 More Barriers to Good Communication
- 7 Palliative and Hospice Care
- 8 Rational Apathy and the Role of Uncertainty
- 9 The Crucible
- 10 Resolving Conflicts at the End of Life
- 11 At the End of the Day
- 12 Coda
- Index
2 - The US Health Care ‘System’
The Good, the Bad, and the Probably Unfixable
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 March 2022
- Intimations of Mortality
- Intimations of Mortality
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- 1 The Conundrum
- 2 The US Health Care ‘System’
- 3 Autonomy and Informed Consent in the Real World
- 4 The Denial of Death and Its Sequelae
- 5 Disorders of Consciousness and the Meaning of Life
- 6 More Barriers to Good Communication
- 7 Palliative and Hospice Care
- 8 Rational Apathy and the Role of Uncertainty
- 9 The Crucible
- 10 Resolving Conflicts at the End of Life
- 11 At the End of the Day
- 12 Coda
- Index
Summary
Health care finance and delivery systems in all of their wonderful complexity exert a significant but often hidden impact on the practice of medicine, including end-of-life care. The US health care finance and delivery system is highly disjunctive and disorganized. In fact, calling it a ‘system’ suggests a level of organization, coordination, and working toward a common purpose that simply doesn’t exist in US health care. Understanding what is going on with end-of-life care in the United States, on both the patient end and the provider side requires a basic grasp of our system of access to health care, payment for care, and regulation of the practice of medicine.
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- Intimations of MortalityMedical Decision-Making at the End of Life, pp. 17 - 36Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2022