English assignment on: Book review on ‘Comparative Health Policy’ by Robert H. Blank and Viola Burau
This review aims to study the book, ‘Comparative Health Policy’ by Robert H. Blank and Viola Burau. The main purpose of this book is to address the policy issues and problems in regard to the health services. The author has presented a comparative analysis in the book and tried to arrive at causes of policy issues, which are common in different countries. Thus, the author attempts to find a root cause of several policy problems in the context of health issues, which are common to various countries. The genre of this book is cross-cultural studies, wherein the focus is on different cultures and to arrive on an empirical data of the problems. Furthermore, it is important to note here that the 3rd edition of Comparative Health Policy is a continuation of its second edition by the same authors. The book is presented by the added information in this edition, unlike the previous one. In this context, it includes reforms in Netherlands and Germany, several examples from Asia and historical facts on the development of health systems. In this book, the authors present examples of several countries such as Australia, Germany, The Netherlands, Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, Singapore, UK and USA and examine their health care systems. The authors have major served the purpose of the book in this new edition. They seem to have searched well for the book and provided good amount of information on this topic.
The content in book includes an introduction over the topic of comparative health policy, which provides a general overview of the main crux of the book, its meaning, relevance and the importance to discuss this topic. It is important to note here that there have not been many works on this topic, thus this book is a way to provide its readers with ample amount of information. The first chapter discusses about the context of health care and provides information on particularly what the health care means. Here, the authors transform their approach from a broader perspective in the introduction to a narrower perspective, by introducing specific terminologies and information on health care systems. The third chapter discusses about the elements of funding, provision and governance, which majorly discusses the backend process in a health policy. The authors here discuss the sources of funding, role of the government, provisions implemented in different countries to establish their health care systems. Thus, the authors here start with the comparative analysis of various countries and figure out similarities and differences in their approach. The next chapter describes various priorities and resource allocation of different countries. Here they emphasis upon the actual work that takes place in health care units. The authors provide information on how different factors, that is the priorities and resource allocation work to create an effective or ineffective health services. Furthermore, the next chapter comprises of the medical profession, wherein the authors aim to provide an insight to the medical profession and gives their readers with important instances of medical profession. The sixth chapter in this book informs about the health care settings outside hospitals, specifically at home. In this context, the author brings out the fact that in many cases, the patients need extra help from their professionals outside the hospital. Thus, it discusses the kind of settings present in various countries, reforms that have been made and provisions with the amount of comfort level provided to the patients. The seventh chapter provides an overview of the public health in several countries. Finally, in the last chapter the authors bring about their main arguments and how can health policies made into efficient service all over. In the book the authors have provided its readers with relatively good amount of information, and the difference with previous editions can certainly be noticed. The main aim of the authors in comparative Health Policy is to compare and contrast the settings of different countries and finally come to the conclusion for the reasons of various issues.
Blank and Burau have provided a proper format to each chapter by providing with satisfactory introductions and conclusions. Each chapter here is very well reversed and the authors seem to clear of the information that they have given.
The authors of this book are Robert H. Blank, who works as a research scholar at New College in Florida. He is also a visiting faculty at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Robert Blank has till now published thirty books in similar genre, specifically in health and biomedical policy (Macmillan n.d.). Viola Burau is an associate professor of Public Policy at University of Aarhus, located in Denmark. She has contributed several works on many topics such as policies, politics of health, professions in the welfare state and etc (Department of Political Science and Government n.d.). The book has presented ample amount of information for the readers to understand and have a satisfactory idea of the whole situation. However, it is to be noted here that large amount of information cannot be fitted into a 336 pages novel and thus, the authors have managed to still contribute effectively in their texts. By providing with a comparative analysis, the authors have chosen one of the most efficient techniques to arrive at a solid argument. Thus, this book has many positive aspects majorly due to its large amount of comparative data. However it also has some negatives aspects to it. One of the most crucial negative aspects of this work is that due to the inclusion of many countries the authors were not able to focus in one major clear concept. The authors have provided several topics and several regions in this book, which has clustered the things and have been ambiguous in few places. As a matter of fact, a 300 pages book cannot comply with all the information, but the authors failed to understand the sensitivity of such issue and hence should have limited the number of concepts used or the places mentioned. This disadvantage sometimes leads the readers into frustration, as they might not understand each point properly and feel that the information is missing. Furthermore, the authors have used long sentences, which has made the understanding of readers, yet more difficult.
On an overall, the book can be success particularly due to the fact that there have not been many works on this topic, thus this book is a way to provide its readers with ample amount of information. Moreover, the amount of information that this book brings is worth appreciation and readers can look forward for a systematic and empirical approach to the study of health care settings in different regions of the world. the authors have in all managed to do justice to the name of this book.
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