Carl F. Ameringer – författare

For over two centuries, the Daughters of Charity, a community of Catholic sisters whose principal occupation was to serve the sick poor, significantly contributed to the formation and development of U.S. hospitals and other healthcare institutions. Donning their large white-winged cornettes, the Daughters served the sick poor during wars and epidemics and founded over fifty hospitals throughout the country.The Daughters of Charity and the Making of the U.S. Healthcare Industry traces their exploits from the beginning of their U.S. healthcare ministry in 1823 to the transfer of their large hospital network to a lay-sponsored entity in 2012. Throughout its history, this religious order experienced several important changes and milestones in medicine and American society: the introduction of germ theory, the rise of the health professions, several waves of Catholic immigrants, economic recessions, the expansion of the federal government into the healthcare arena (Medicare and Medicaid), racial segregation, cost containment, competition, and many medical innovations. This book recounts how the Daughters overcame challenges to the ownership and operation of their hospitals, how they employed certain features of their French heritage and the U.S. legal system to forge a vast hospital network while facing resistance from clergy, doctors, and government officials and prejudice against women and Catholics.With this contribution, Carl F. Ameringer offers to his readers a better understanding of the extent of the Daughters' accomplishments, of what Americans lost when their numbers diminished, and what we must do to sustain their efforts.

America's market-based health care system, unique among the nations of the world, is in large part the product of an obscure, yet profound, revolution that overthrew the medical monopoly in the late 1970s. In this lucid, balanced account, Carl F. Ameringer tells how this revolution came into being when the U.S. Supreme Court and Congress prompted the antitrust agencies of the federal government - the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department - to change the rules of the health care system. Ameringer: lays out the key events that led up to this regime change; explores its broader social, political, and economic contexts; examines the views of both its proponents and opponents; and, considers its current trajectory.

The unique composition and configuration of doctors and hospitals in the US is leading to a crisis in primary care provision. There are significantly more specialists than generalists, and many community hospitals and outpatient facilities are concentrated in affluent areas with high rates of comprehensive insurance coverage. These particular features present difficult challenges to policymakers seeking to increase access to care. Carl F. Ameringer shows why the road to universal healthcare is not built on universal finance alone. Policymakers in other countries successfully align finance with delivery to achieve better access, lower costs, and improved population health. This book explains how the US healthcare system developed, and why efforts to expand insurance coverage in the absence of significant changes to delivery will fuel higher costs without achieving the desired results.