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Title: Who Killed Health Care?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure
ISBN: 0071487808
Author:
Regina Herzlinger
Publicate Date: 2007-06-01
Publish: 2007-06-01
List Price: $24.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.5
Format: Hardcover
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $15.60
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $13.97
Amazon Merchant Price: $16.47
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Who Killed Health Care
Twenty years ago on a cold November night, I was one of two nurses called into the operating room were the team preformed a c-section and delivered a healthy baby boy. While waiting for the mother to recover, I picked up a copy of JAMA in the doctors lounge, there I found an article authored by some PHD entitled: Stop the Charade. It was the authors contention if we made all the non-profit charter hospitals in the country for profit the government would save enough money (eliminating the tax subsidies) to buy every American health care insurance.
Twenty years later author Regina Herzlinger MD PHD echoes this same strategy combined with other comprehensive solutions for curing the health care debacle infecting our nation. In her book: Who Killed Health Care. Dr Herzlinger identifies the culpable players who have brought havoc upon us; government bureaucrats that exorcise legislative powers to manipulate markets, technocrats who employ statistics to homogenize variables into one size fits all diagnoses, and industry lobbyists, special interest peddlers who know how to oil the system with campaign contributions.
Dr. Herzlinger provides a compelling argument in favor of consumer driven health care. She has cut through the complexity of this out of control industry identifying the problems and offering competent solutions to put healthcare back in the hands of consumers, physicians and health care professionals.
Meet Jack Morgan and follow his tragic demise. Learn how our bloated bureaucratic health care system failed him, and how his needless death could have been avoided. Learn how consumer driven health care could have enhanced his quality of life and saved him. Dr. Herzlinger demonstrates how this clandestine industry operates, how knowledge is power in the hands of the few; and a lack of transparency keeps consumers in the fog inhibiting their ability to make informed decisions regarding their own health care. She provides compelling analogies; consumer driven industries not so different from health care that thrive in a free market.
Learn why we dump our hard earned dollars into employer health care plans without question, or benefit of choice. Learn how everyone can benefit in a transparent marketplace, how competition enhances insurance company performance, while simultaneously driving down costs associated with delivery; spurring innovation while simultaneously improving the quality of health care. Learn how transparency growths technology, how risk adjusted insurance plans for specific illnesses aimed at prevention are part of solution.
Consumer driven health care is capitalism at it's finest; encouraging healthy competition between insurance companies, hospitals, and physician groups all vying for our health care dollars. It is this competition in a free market that will resuscitate the health care industry, add value, and drive down cost.
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2: The Fox can protect the henhouse
Who Killed Health Care is a tedious book that in the end would put the health care of Americans directly into the hands of profit-driven health insurance companies. Despite her recommendations about carrots and sticks to make these companies, hospitals and physicians more accountable she still thrusts consumers into the "free market" and relies on that genus of the capitalist economy which we now know has failed us. The magical thinking that she supports is that health insurance companies will do the right thing for consumers if the consumers buy the policies directly without government or employers interfering.
Relying on insurance companies to respond to the consumer's needs is like the fox telling you he would gladly protect the hen house for you. She spends three fourths of the book telling you how terrible the government, insurance companies, hospitals and doctors are then proposes regulations and requirements on them that would make them do the right thing.
What we need in this country is an uncomplicated single payer system based on the amazingly efficient Medicare system. Such a system would allow free choice of doctor's or hospitals and would insure that no American would live in fear of a terminal illness bankrupting their family. Single payer is NOT socialized medicine. The government would not own hospitals or employ doctors and nurses. Patients could see any doctor and use any hospital or pharmacy they wanted, all with one simple card. This could all be accomplished with the same amount of money that we are spending on health care now. Extra costs could easily be absorbed by taking the 30 percent profit margin of the insurance companies out of the equation.
I believe health care is a right not a privilege for those who can afford it. We must take the profit motive out of health care and equalize the playing field for every American.
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3: Good topic.. good content, not written well though
This is definitely a book that gives you insight around Consumer-driven healthcare. But my only issue is that it doesnt flow well. A lot of times the same point was said over and over again. The Chapters and sub-sections dont really bridge well together... sometimes it just reads like a dramatic keynote speech.
Overall, I recommend the book- the concepts and issues in it are worth knowing about. But dont read it very closely- you'll get bored. Wish it was edited by a professional writer.
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4: No explanation
I haven't seen one review explaining how this is going to help lower health care costs. There's only mention of all kinds of grants, subsidies, means-test, and consumer driven methods. How is an individual person supposed to negotiate or "get" a better rate than what a corporation can negotiate? Doesn't make sense. How is this going to combat overpriced drugs, hospitals, physicians, middle men? The profit motive is still there for the insurers in any case. Seems like a bunch of complicated mumbo jumbo that appeals to "do it yourself" and "yippie for capitalism" jingoists. A book worth reading is A Second Opinion: Rescuing America's Health Care by Dr. Arnold Relman. Once we stop fearing the rest of the world and drop our arrogance, that will be the day we can finally find peace.
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5: Tip of the iceberg, see the image
I've been thinking about publishing a book on health intelligence, and borrowed this from a colleague.
My contribution will be the image I created while thinking about what the book should look like--the inner square was co-created with another person.
This book can be summarized with three words: *corruption* killed health; *transparency* can heal us; and only we, the *patients* (or victims) can come together to demand resolution.
In the comment, where Amazon does allow URLs, I am pointing to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers report online, which documents 50% of all health costs as waste.
The author ends with very specific recommendations that are excellent as far as they go, but that ignore the 80% of solutions that are outside the existing hospital-pharmaceutical complex. The Japanese have started weighing and measuring their population--a population's health and vitality is the single greatest contributor to national power and prosperity, ergo, we need a "360" approach to national health, and I try to depict that in the image above.
See also:
The Blue Death: Disease, Disaster, and the Water We Drink
Fast Food Nation
The Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead
Pandora's Poison: Chlorine, Health, and a New Environmental Strategy
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
The Health of Nations: Infectious Disease, Environmental Change, and Their Effects on National Security and Development
Diet for a Small Planet (20th Anniversary Edition)
Human Scale
Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace
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