Payer, Provider, Consumer: Industry Confronts Health Care Costs

With this first monograph, Springer-Verlag launches an unusual publishing venture. The purpose of the Springer Series on Industry and Health Care is to explore in depth the current and potential future role of industry both management and labor in all private sector enterprises-as a financer of health care benefits, as a provider of health care services, and as an extremely influential "consumer" of health care. The assumption behind the series is that private industry has the capabil ity, as an alternative to increased government intervention, to effect major change in the health care delivery system and is beginning to show evidence of exercising that influence. The subject matter covered by the series crosses boundaries between disciplines and specialities-occupational medicine, medical care, public health, economics, business administration, law, public policy, medical sociology-and arises in disparate arenas-labor-manage ment relations, corporate negotiations with insurance carriers, physician patient interactions, public policy, and politics. The Springer Series will draw much of its material from interdisciplinary working conferences, will analyze and synthesize the discussions, add timely background material, and be published within no more than six months of the conferences on which they build. The series will consist of four monographs a year and two volumes of background papers.

1. Introduction: Industry Confronts Health Care Costs. - 2. Industry as Payer: Employee Health Benefits. - Assuming a Broader Role. - An Expanding Benefit Package. - Some Causes and Effects of Rising Costs. - Approaches to Cost Containment. - 3. Industry as Provider: Health Programs Sponsored by Employers or Unions. - Early History. - Occupational Medicine Takes Shape. - The Occupational Safety and Health Act. - Industrial Medical Programs. - Creating Alternative Delivery Systems A Role for Industry. - 4. Industry as Consumer: Health Planning and Consumer Health Information. - Community Health Planning. - Industry Involvement in Health Planning. - Individual Decisions about Health and Health Care. - 5. Summing Up. - 6. Issues for the Future. - Appendix: Conference Participants Quoted. - Notes. - Annotated Bibliography.