Imserba Webstore - The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

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Binding: Hardcover Dewey Decimal Number: 362.10973 EAN: 9781594202346 Feature: ISBN13: 9781594202346 ISBN: 1594202346 Label: The Penguin Press Manufacturer: The Penguin Press Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 288 Publication Date: 2009-08-20 Publisher: The Penguin Press Studio: The Penguin Press
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Editorial Reviews: Bestselling author T. R. Reid guides a whirlwind tour of successful health care systems worldwide, revealing possible paths toward U.S. reform. In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can't seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost. In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own-including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada-where he finds inspiration in example. Reid shares evidence from doctors, government officials, health care experts, and patients the world over, finding that foreign health care systems give everybody quality care at an affordable cost. And that dreaded monster "socialized medicine" turns out to be a myth. Many developed countries provide universal coverage with private doctors, private hospitals, and private insurance. In addition to long-established systems, Reid also studies countries that have carried out major health care reform. The first question facing these countries-and the United States, for that matter-is an ethical issue: Is health care a human right? Most countries have already answered with a resolute yes, leaving the United States in the murky moral backwater with nations we typically think of as far less just than our own. The Healing of America lays bare the moral question at the heart of our troubled system, dissecting the misleading rhetoric surrounding the health care debate. Reid sees problems elsewhere, too: He finds poorly paid doctors in Japan, endless lines in Canada, mistreated patients in Britain, spartan facilities in France. Still, all the other rich countries operate at a lower cost, produce better health statistics, and cover everybody. In the end, The Healing of America is a good news book: It finds models around the world that Americans can borrow to guarantee health care for everybody who needs it.
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: Very inforrmative Comment: It is not an easy topic to write about, but Mr. Reid did a good job of bringing his bum shoulder into the picture to add some light element to a very serious subject. Customer Rating: Summary: You Mean They're Not All Socialistic? Comment: T.R. Reid actually went there! In his very engaging writing style, he takes us with him to interview doctors, patients, healthcare economists and so on. He had his own bad shoulder examined along with examining the healthcare systems of a number of countries. While the U.S. ranks at the top in critical care, it ranks far from the top in infant death rates, healthy days over age 65 and longevity. Plus, the ones that outrank us do it on less money per person. To brand everything that involves the government as "socialist medicine" is demagoguery. Healthcare in various countries comes in all flavors and mixes, such as single payer, private practice, private insurance. Private practice, government insurance. And so on. And the U.S. is itself a mixture. Great Britain has socialist medicine where the government owns the facilities and the providers are government employees. So does the U.S. with it's VA and Indian Health Services. France has single payer, private practice coverage. Just like U.S. Medicare. Further, doctors offices have hardly any files or non-medical staff. All electronic and centrally available for access among all of a patient's healthcare providers. No need for a staff of insurance verifiers with a single payer. Plus, by law, the doctors are paid in days. Reid explains how healthcare works with these various combinations as the takes the reader from one country to another, exposing the strengths and weaknesses of each. Further, he talks about how medical procedure and device, and drug innovation are alive and well overseas. Perhaps best, the doctors in these countries like focusing 100% on the patient instead of spending so much effort fighting insurance companies. The book is factual and experiential, not the pure propaganda coming out of the proponents and opponents of various U.S. healthcare proposals. The goal of the book is to show the reader that more can be had for less. Better healthcare for much less money is not only an idea, it's a reality. There is plenty to copy, if we can just avoid politicizing and polarizing the subject. If you want something besides the political polemics, this is a must read. Customer Rating: Summary: An invaluable assessment Comment: THE HEALING OF AMERICA: A GLOBAL QUEST FOR BETTER, CHEAPER, AND FAIRER HEALTH CARE isn't just another coverage of America's healthcare pros and cons: it provides an assessment of various healthcare systems around the world, arguing that solutions to problems already exist in other systems. He travels of wealthy, industrialized democracies like our own and gathers reports from doctors, government officials and patients alike to consider how foreign countries provide quality health care at a reasonable cost. An invaluable assessment. Customer Rating: Summary: Everyone should read this book Comment: Given all the confusion and spin out there, this is a book that everyone who has any concerns about the future of healthcare in America should read. It lays to rest many of the myths circulating about the various options under consideration, and does so by analyzing a number of systems employed throughout the industialized world, East and West, fairly stating strengths and weaknesses. The book is easy reading and a deft presentation of what could be a dry and difficult subject. Customer Rating: Summary: Why Fear Learning From Our Friends? Comment: If you never saw the ocean, you might think your local swimming hole is a pretty big body of water. That's the problem with people who think our American health care system is the best in the world: they have never gone to see if anything is better. Pride in your local swimming hole is harmless, but health care is life and death. Only an arrogant fool would think that THEY know all the answers, and cannot possibly learn from our friends in Germany, Japan, France, Canada, India and the U.K.. A wise man would go there, try their system, and see what ideas we can borrow for ourselves. In this book, T. R. Reid does every American a great service by taking his bum shoulder around the world to be looked at and treated. What he finds will surprise anyone who thinks the rest of the world is a socialist hell, burdened by grey bureaucrats staffing drably uniformed Death Panels. The facts that he finds is that each of those nations has a different system, tuned to their particular histories, and with strengths and weaknesses. Most are dominated by private suppliers, e.g. doctors who run their own offices, and full of useful ideas we can employ ... if we are not too prideful. This book provides an actual experience of seeking health care around the world; this makes it is a direct threat to those who benefit from our current arrangements. Our existing system has enormous institutional inertia. Reid tries to demonstrate that inertia can be overcome, in describing how Taiwan and Switzerland converted their systems around the time that the Clinton initiatives failed. I suspect, unfortunately, that our American system will be a trickier conversion, because the forces arrayed against reform are mightly rich; you cannot take a juicy steak away from a pack of hungry dogs without getting bitten. If you're in a hurry, you will appreciate that this book is a quick read. While it's got plenty of footnotes so you can verify the assertions and learn more, its organization lends itself to grabbing a quick chapter while you can. I especially enjoyed the chapters about each nation; they were like a short story of a visitor seeking help and happened when he did. I was shocked to discover that, on average, Japanese visit doctors more than twice as often as Americans; France's information technology makes ours look like a joke; even in much-maligned Britain people's lives are saved because there is no financial barrier to coming to the doctor if you have a suspicious lump. Why are Americans afraid to learn these basic facts? However, I found the most surprising chapter entitled "An Apple A Day". It discusses why our current system works against preventative measures. Since your insurer as a youth will not be your insurer in old age, the former has no reason to do anything that would benefit only the latter. If a private insurer can put off dealing with a problem until the patient turns 65, the private insurer may not have to deal with it at all! It is a perfect example of how what is economically efficient in individual health PAYMENT transactions results in systemic inefficiency in the overall health CARE system. However, the most important chapter may be "The First Question". Ultimately health care is not a financial question; it is a moral question. What kind of nation are we? What kind of people are we? If we are content that a woman shall live or die depending solely upon whether she is the president of a company or its minimum-wage floor-mopper, then we need do nothing. We have that system already. Of course, we can't be very proud of that; it's basically a return to the hells of Upton Sinclair. If, however, we are a more decent people, we believe that all of us should have a good chance at life. Life is not a luxury to be reserved, but a necessity to be shared by to all members of our community. And, best of all, as this book shows, we have friends in other nations who can show us how they did it. It's our choice.