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Author: Jonathan Cohn
ISBN : B000PDZFWU
New from $9.78
Format: PDF, EPUB
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America's health care system is unraveling, with millions of hard-working people unable to pay for prescription drugs and regular checkups, let alone hospital visits. Jonathan Cohn traveled across the United States—the only country in the developed world that does not guarantee its citizens access to medical care—to investigate why this crisis is happening and to see firsthand its impact on ordinary Americans. Passionate, powerful, illuminating, and often devastating, Sick chronicles the decline of America's health care system, and lays bare the consequences any one of us could suffer if we don't replace it.
Direct download links available for Free Sick: The True Story of How American
- File Size: 293 KB
- Print Length: 338 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0060580461
- Publisher: HarperCollins e-books (October 13, 2009)
- Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000PDZFWU
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #118,703 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #31
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Administration & Policy > Health Care Delivery
- #31
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Administration & Policy > Health Care Delivery
Free Sick: The True Story of How American
Why this book is subtitled "The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis - And the People Who Pay the Price" is beyond me. Everyone has a story about the failure of our health care system or "non-system" and everyone is paying the price. Not only is it becoming more obvious by the day, almost every presidential contender is promising some kind of reform.
Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic has given us a number of revealing and disturbing case studies, each indicating system failure; and with each study he gives us some historical background as to how certain institutions - Medicare, Medicaid, managed care, employer-based health insurance, etc. - came to be. The historical background is good because is shows that there was no single policy or grand design behind our current mess; it is more a product of haphazard decisions made over a long period of time.
Let's look at some facts. America spends about $7,000 per capita on health care annually, about twice as much as the country in second place. Yet we are ranked 37th in health system performance, according to WHO. There is indisputably something very wrong.
Our system can best be described as a private, employer-based health insurance system. It started during World War II with the wartime freeze on wages. Companies started offering health insurance to attract and keep employees. And the rest, as they say, is history. Today we have Daimler basically giving away Chrysler because they have about $18 billion worth of health care liabilities. Every single worker is paying for about three retirees - and their families. Now, the only way Chrysler can keep employees is if they drastically reduce their health benefits.
So what's the author's solution?
The US health care system is not in good shape and this book suggests some of the reasons. 40% of US citizens with problems do not get care due to cost issues. Patient satisfaction is lower in the US than in Canada, the UK and many other countries with some form a national plan. The US spends more than any other country with worse overall results and lower rates of coverage in the population than any other industrial country. We spend less on preventive care as a percentage of expenditures than any industrial nation. In 2004, 35% of Americans believe that the US health care system needed fundamental rebuilding.
I could go on, but the clear FACT is that US health care is in bad shape and getting worse quickly for many, many Americans. What is the solution? A single payer system is a good start. Only those ideologically paranoid about government (anyone who still thinks that the current Administration in DC is doing a good job, that global warming is a hoax, and that abstinence only education works is probably in that camp) big pharmacy, big insurance, and affluent folks with good jobs and good insurance disagree. Creating competition on the basis of value (like reduced illness) rather than cost and risk shifting would be a second place to go.
Lots of countries have great single payer, national plans that do well. I have lived in some of these places (like Germany) and they are great. Most allow for supplemental and/or private plans at an extra cost (like Japan) but they provide a good base of care for all. Speaking of Germany, they pay about 35% of what we pay for drugs. Like I said, the current system works well... for big pharma!
Cohn's book give an excellent historical context for the problem.
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