Princeton University Press
Unhealthy Politics: The Battle Over Evidence-Based Medicine
Key Metrics
- Eric M Patashnik
- Princeton University Press
- Hardcover
- 9780691158815
- 9.3 X 6 X 1 inches
- 1.05 pounds
- Medical > Health Policy
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
How partisanship, polarization, and medical authority stand in the way of evidence-based medicine
The U.S. medical system is touted as the most advanced in the world, yet many common treatments are not based on sound science. Treatments can go into widespread use before they are rigorously evaluated, and every year patients are harmed because they receive too many procedures--and too few treatments that really work. Unhealthy Politics sheds new light on why the government's response to this troubling situation has been so inadequate, and why efforts to improve the evidence base of U.S. medicine continue to cause so much political controversy and public trepidation.
This critically important book draws on public opinion surveys, physician surveys, case studies, and political science models to explain how political incentives, polarization, and the misuse of professional authority have undermined efforts to tackle the medical evidence problem and curb wasteful spending. It paints a portrait of a medical industry with vast influence over which procedures and treatments get adopted, and a public burdened by the rising costs of health care yet fearful of going against doctor's orders. The book shows how the government's efforts to promote evidence-based medicine have become mired in partisan debates. It also proposes sensible solutions that can lead to better, more efficient health care for all of us.
Unhealthy Politics offers vital insights not only into health policy but also into the limits of science, expertise, and professionalism as political foundations for pragmatic problem solving in American democracy.
Author Bio
Eric M. Patashnik is Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Political Science, and Chair, Department of Political Science.
Patashnik is also Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration. Before coming to Brown, Patashnik held faculty positions at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA, and the department of political science at Yale University.
During his time at UVA, he served as associate dean and acting dean at the Batten School. Patashnik is the author and editor of several books including Unhealthy Politics: The Battle over Evidence-Based Medicine (with Alan Gerber and Conor Dowling, Princeton University Press, 2017) and Reforms at Risk: What Happens After Major Policy Changes Are Enacted (Princeton University Press, 2008).
He has twice won the Louis Brownlow Book Award of the National Academy of Public Administration and also won the Don K. Price Book Award of the American Political Science Association. He was a Research Fellow at the Brookings Institution during 1995-96, served as President of the Public Policy Section of the American Political Science Association during 2017-18, and was the editor of Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law during 2016-2019.
Patashnik received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
Source: Brown University
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