1. What percentage of the Gross National Product is spent on healthcare in the U.S.?
2. Identify the key drivers of healthcare costs and which costs are most responsible for the high U.S. healthcare expenditures.
3. What are the ways that healthcare insurance is financed, in both the public and private sectors?
4. What are the benefits, eligibility criteria, and financing structure of Medicare, Medicaid, and S-chip programs? Who is responsible for administering these programs?
5. How do market forces influence health-care delivery?
6. For most Americans, how is their healthcare insurance financed, and what are the inherent strengths and weaknesses of this system?
7. How does the U.S. fair in terms of health-quality indicators (e.g. infant mortality), compared with other nations, and what percentage of their GDP is spent on healthcare?
8. How are hospitals, laboratories, and radiological centers regulated?
9. The backlash against managed care has much to do with restrictive benefit packages and an over emphasis on costs. Provide examples of 10. how managed care organizations have responded to this backlash.
11. What is ERISA, and which entities are subject to ERISA regulation?
12. What trends do you see in the structure and organization of the U.S. healthcare system?
13. If it continues this way, which areas might be most affected?