Georgetown U. Press

Can a health care market be moral; a Catholic vision.

McDonough (PhD, Graduate Theological Union) applies the tradition of Roman Catholic social thought, long suspicious of laissez faire capitalism, to assessment of how health care should be organized and provisioned in the United States. Both Catholic social teachings and the different ways health care is organized around the world are discussed as preliminaries, followed by critical examination of the market-based approaches to health care advocated by Milton Friedman, Regina Herzlinger, Mark Pauly, and Alain Einthoven. McDonough judges elements of these approaches to be appropriate, so long as they are balanced by the "value dimension approach" of Daniel Callahan, which is "grounded in the meaning of health, in appropriate medical goals, and in economic sustainability." (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)

The greening of the U.S. military; environmental policy, national security, and organizational change.

Durant (public administration and policy, American U.) describes an epic and ongoing struggle to build a corporate sense of responsibility within the US military for ensuring that its day-to-day operations promote national security without putting public health, safety, and the environment at risk. The story is less about the power of ideas, he says, than about the protection and pursuit of political, organizational, and personal prerogatives. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)