Description: 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.
Review Quotes:
Kirkus Review
"This accessible, comprehensive book makes a strong case for a complete overhaul of the U.S. health care system. No fan of the Affordable Care Act, which he says has failed to reduce costs and is a boondoggle for corporate interests, Geyman concludes that the only viable alternative is a single-payer system: 'Today's health care system, serving its corporate masters more than patients, is unfair, ineffective, inhumane for those left out, and financially unsustainable.' . . . Articulate, loaded with informative details, especially timely . . ."
John Geyman has written an expert and highly readable account of the American health care system--how in the past 60 years it changed from a system devoted to caring for patients to one devoted to maximizing revenues--and he tells us clearly how to fix it.
--Marcia Angell, M.D., former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine and author of The Truth About Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What We Can Do About It
John Geyman, one of America's most distinguished family doctors, has given us a masterful overview of what's wrong with our health care system and how to fix it. He supplements the daunting facts and figures with an engaging account of his life as a country doctor and medical leader.
--David Himmelstein, M.D. and Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., both general internists, health policy experts, and professors of public health at the City University of New York
Dr. John Geyman describes the health care policy choices facing our new presidential administration, gently but firmly. As it has been since its passage in 2010, the Affordable Care Act stands squarely in the way. Dr. Geyman examined the options - repair, repeal, or replace - with the detail and documentation we expect from an expert observer and participant of American health care for five decades. Adding zest to this book is his memoir of how he evolved from geology major into an advocate for universal health care. The reader gains a greater understanding both of American health care and of one of the most highly respected veterans of our ongoing struggle to repair the world's most dysfunctional health care system.
--Samuel Metz, M.D., adjunct associate professor of anesthesiology, Oregon Health and Science University, Portland
Dr. Geyman's description and analysis of the resultant hollowing out of the soul of medical care as the ongoing corporatization of medicine in America continues, and his prescription for change as seen through the lens of his 60 years long career, is invaluable. It is also a cautionary lesson about an even larger danger to America--that of capitalism-run-amok--a lesson that goes far beyond health care, and should be understood by anybody concerned about the soul of our country.
--Phillip Caper, M.D., internist with long experience in health policy since the 1970s, and past chairman of the National Council on Health Planning and Development