Everything you always wanted to know about European Union health policies but were afraid to ask, 4th, rev. ed

This comprehensively revised fourth edition answers these questions. It provides a broad andup-to-date review and analysis of European Union public health policies. It begins by explainingthe basic politics of European integration and European policy-making in health, including thebasic question of how the European Union (‎EU)‎ came to have a health policy and what that policydoes. Thereafter, it moves on to the three faces of European Union health policy.The first face is explicit health policy, both public health policy and policies to strengthen healthservices and systems in areas such as cancer, and communicable diseases. The second face isinternal market building policies, which are often more consequential for health services, but arenot made with health as a core objective. These include professional and patient mobility,regulation of insurers and health care providers, and competition in health care. They also includesome of the policies through which the EU has had dramatic and positive health effects, namelyenvironmental regulation, consumer protection and labour law. The third face is fiscal governance,in which the EU institutions police member state decisions, including relating to health.Each face has different politics, law, policy, and health effects. The book provides a synthesis ofthe different faces and the different ways in which they have been used to strengthen or weakenpublic health and health systems in Europe. It shows the many, often unappreciated, ways thatthe EU has worked for health, as well as the opportunities to further strengthen the EU's positiveimpact on health.This book is aimed at policy-makers and students of health systems in the EU who seek tounderstand how the influence of the EU on health policy affects those systems and their patients.To ensure that the EU’s impact on health is wholly positive, the wider health community mustunderstand and engage with the EU in the future – something this book aims to encourage.