Find out the latest indie author news. For FREE.

ADVERTISEMENT

Formats
Paperback Details
  • 03/2017
  • 978-1-938218-15-6
  • 300 pages
  • $18.95
Crisis in U. S. Health Care: Corporate Power vs. the Common Good
The problems of U. S. health care are of intense public interest today. The debate over where to go next to rein in costs and improve access to quality health care has become bitterly partisan, with distorted rhetoric largely uninformed by history, evidence, or health policy science. Based on present trends, our expensive dysfunctional system threatens patients, families, the government, and taxpayers with future bankruptcy. This book takes a 60-year view of our health care system, from 1956 to 2016, from the perspective of a family physician who has lived through these years as a practitioner in two rural communities, a professor and administrator of family medicine in medical schools, a journal editor for 30 years, and a researcher and writer on health care for more than four decades. There has been a complete transformation of health care and medical practice over that time from physicians in solo or small group practice and community hospitals to an enormous, largely corporatized industry that has left behind many of the traditions of personalized health care. This is an objective, non-partisan look at the major trends changing U. S. health care over these years, ranging from increasing technology and uncontrollable costs to depersonalization and changing ethics in medicine and health care. This book points out some of the highs—and lows—of these changes over the years, which may surprise some readers. It also compares three basic alternatives to reform the system for the common good vs. the continuing greed of corporate stakeholders and their shareholders.
Reviews
Rosemary Stevens, Ph.D., professor of history and sociology of science at Weil C

In Crisis in U. S. Health Care, renowned medical reformer Dr. John Geyman offers a dazzling critique of U. S. medical practice and policy. The book begins with a well-documented, convincing historical study of how government programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, have supported the commercialization of American medicine, accompanied by enormous financial costs. The result has been to create an inequitable and unsustainable system in which, he argues, technology has been overvalued and individual patient care undervalued. Part 2 presents a paralle, moving autobiography of his own earlier service as a family physician in the Northwest and as a leader in the field of family medicine, which brings national debates down to earth. The central question here is what (and for whom) medicine should be for, over and above its status as a business. In the concluding section Geyman urges readers to dig into history, remember the principle of the common good, accept the social and economic benefits of a healthy society, and redefine the role of government to these ends. While there are no simple ways forward, Crisis provides an accessible, very readable and necessary jolt.

Formats
Paperback Details
  • 03/2017
  • 978-1-938218-15-6
  • 300 pages
  • $18.95
ADVERTISEMENT

Loading...