Understanding and Improving the US Healthcare System

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Health is important to everyone.  For most people, that means thatunderstanding the healthcare system is important.  As a patient or a caregiver for a loved one,your understanding of the system can mean everything from getting the righthelp, to economic stress in paying medical bills, to medical misadventures andeven worse.  And if you’re a healthcareprofessional (or are in training or want to be a healthcare professional someday),understanding the system is a critical – but often under-developed – part ofoptimizing the help you can provide your community.

Despite this importance, confident understanding of the UShealthcare system is alarmingly rare. This course is designed to change that – by helping students understandthe core structure and accomplishments of the system, the recurringshortcomings, and attempted remedies through policy reform.  Rather than emphasizing complexity (a focusof many other courses about healthcare policy), the lessons in this course willhighlight central themes that learners can take away from the course and applyto their own experiences – and other coursework – with confidence.  Moreover, students who seek more advancedcontent will have ample opportunity to tailor their learning accordingly.

In addition, through a unique, coursewide group exercisethat will serve as a keystone of this course, all learners will have theopportunity to learn how they can improve the US healthcare system.  Whether as individuals, in groups, or as futurearchitects of system reform, students in this course will enjoy a premieropportunity to understand the US healthcare system – and their options for addressingproblems in the system – as they never have before.  

This course was co-developed by the course director, Matthew Davis, MD, MAPP, and course producer, Michael Rubyan, MPH.  Davis is a senior faculty member and longtime teacher regarding health policy at the University of Michigan Medical School, School of Public Policy, and School of Public Health.  Rubyan is a doctoral student at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.