Showing posts with label health policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health policy. Show all posts

60% Off Discounts: Buy Cheap Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (Publicaffairs Reports) Review

Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (Publicaffairs Reports)

Are you looking to buy Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (Publicaffairs Reports)? here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (Publicaffairs Reports). check out the link below:

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Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (Publicaffairs Reports) Review

I'm a family physician that has followed the healthcare reform debate closely, dating well back into the Democratic primary season when Hillary and Obama were duking it out, dating even as far back as the failed Bill and Hillary Clinton first attempt during Bill Clinton's presidency. I found Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law to give a much richer historical perspective, and to give a much better analysis of the actual impact that the bill is likely to have, than was available from the fragmented and sensational mainstream media coverage.
The book is a collection of essays written by Washington Post reporters, followed by the actual text of the bill. The essays in the book are far more analytical and informative than what was typically available throughout the somewhat histrionic coverage of Republican and Democratic maneuvering to respectively block or pass the eventual bill. One could have been left with the impression, when it was all over but the shouting, that the resulting bill was weakened to the point of being inconsequential from the point of view of reform, and enormous regarding eventual cost. Read Landmark, and you'll have a different opinion on both those points.
What was useful in the book? The many failed historical efforts to provide some form of national healthcare coverage go back over 100 years, a battle that until this last month stymied many presidents (including Teddy Roosevelt). The historical review alone made the book a worthwhile read for me. Secondly, the authors make a convincing case that, much in contrast to the typical media coverage, this bill represents a deep and broad change in the American approach to healthcare for its citizens, far more so than the Medicare and Medicaid legislation. After reading the essays, and even more powerfully after reading the actual legislation, I'm convinced that the authors are correct. Why? Though it is true that the bill is corrupted in places by special interests, and weakened by the deletions forced by political compromise, it also becomes clear that through a combination of fiat and incentive the new healthcare law will, for better or for worse, markedly change the way doctors/providers do business, and how their patients/clients experience their healthcare.
Fiats? No exclusion for pre-existing conditions, no excisions from insurance because you actually USE what you've purchased, no lifetime limits on coverage just because you actually got sick. Incentives? Buried in the legislation itself is a long list of encouragements to do what amounts to serious R & D (research and development) in methods to improve American health, and to treat American illness. In a country where 85% of health related research is done by notoriously biased private industry (the reverse of the ratio in Europe), creating conditions more amenable to less biased scientific research is a welcome and little discussed part of bill. Creating incentives for physicians/providers to focus on quality will change what you experience when you go in for healthcare, and this book details what you will be seeing change over the next few years.
As a socially liberal, financially conservative physician (voted for Reagan, actually went to his inaugural parade) my bottom line about Landmark is this: whether you love or hate the bill, your perspective on it will be different, and better balanced, when you are done reading it. Your ability to discuss the bill accurately will be significantly enhanced, as I've already found out on multiple occasions when confronted with nonsense statements from both the left and the right. If you wish to consider yourself informed on the Healthcare Reform Bill, this book will go a long way to getting you there.

Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All (Publicaffairs Reports) Overview



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60% Off Discounts: Best Price The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care Review

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

Are you looking to buy The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care? here is the right place to find the great deals. we can offer discounts of up to 90% on The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. check out the link below:

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

I bought this book after reading Jacob Weisberg's review in Newsweek. It is the best thing on the subject for the following reasons: 1. It is well written even funny in places. 2. It is very informative. 3. It presents comparative data both as to health outcomes and also ways of paying for health care 4. It is non-partisan, even though by the end one wonders why we Americans are paying so much for health outcomes that are actually worse than any comparable country. 5. It is revealing as to the complexity of the US; for example, I didn't know that as many as 80 million Americans are already covered by systems nearly identical to the British or Canadian, i.e. medicaid, medicare, military, veterans and Department of Indian Affairs - who would have thought that? But 45 million others are not covered at all. Everyone else is covered, more or less, by insurance and so are the Germans, French and Japanese etc. But what a difference in the insurance systems! In the other countries you get insurance just like here EXCEPT THAT 1. you cannot be denied 2. you cannot be cancelled 3. everyone is covered and 4. your premiums are regulated by government which of course is what the entire debate is about. Because here the insurance industry is for profit and the premiums reflect that fact, the amazing fact that US health is the USA's largest industry by far, larger that the State of California, four times larger that the military, in fact US health would be the world's 8th largest country. No wonder the debate is so fierce. This excellent books set it all out readably and comprehensively.

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

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.

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