Two Books with a Non-Political Approach to Saving our Failing American Healthcare

An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system – and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems.
“Patients can save thousands of dollars by purchasing An American Sickness by Elisabeth Rosenthal.”— New York Journal of Books
In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast?
Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw.
The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn’t just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a health care system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

Catastrophic Care by David Goldhill
Catastrophic Care explodes the myth that Medicare and insurance coverage can make care cheaper and improve our health. It shows how efforts to reform the system, including the Affordable Care Act, will do nothing to address the waste of the health care industry, which currently costs the country nearly $2.7 trillion annually and in which as many as 200, 000 Americans die each year from preventable erros. Catastrophic Care proposes a completely new approach, one that will change the way you think about one of our most pressing national problems.
The London Guardian’s Michael Wolff says: Powerful—edge0of-the-seat riveting—because it is not, in any sense a policy book. Rather, this is a story about saving ourselves…It steps outside the established political debate and lexicon. It is one of the rare books addressing a major national policy issue that is able to do so in language not already debased by the problem itself. Alas, healthcare civilians can’t actually read most books about healthcare……But you can read this one.
Harvard Medical School Dean of Faculty, Jeffrey S. Flier says: For those who are troubled by both the failures of our health care system and the misdirected diagnosis and prescriptions offered by pundits, policy experts, and politicians from across the political spectrum, Goldhill offers a much needed antidote. By pointing out the almost invisible incentives and regulations that drive the dysfunction of our current system, he offers an illuminating framework for understanding the crisis, and then a path to the kind of reforms that will surely be necessary.

Health Care in Tennessee

My somewhat sketchy notes on Tennessee Congressman Jim Cooper’s question and answer session on Health Care. Cooper has impressive educational credentials that include Oxford and Harvard and he currently teaches part time at Vanderbilt. His Cell number: 615 714 1719.

Fifteen years ago, thanks to getting a yearly colonoscopy, he was successfully treated for colon cancer.  Not everyone can afford to have yearly wellness checkups.  Yet, the first of our constitutional rights is the right to life for all, not just the wealthy.
He says that in the U.S., Medical care is a business primarily for profit. We have more care, but not better care. Our healthcare ranks 37th in the world. As many as 30% of treatments prescribed are unnecessary. There’s a 15% chance of coming out of the hospital worse than you went in. We’ve lost 8 hospitals in TN, more than any state except Texas.
Blue Cross/Blue Shield controls 60 -70% of the health insurance market. This gives them the power to make a 69% rate increase unchallenged. They get a one billion dollar bail out automatically every year. Medical insurance has to be attached to local provider networks of hospitals and doctors, so we are limited to insurers within our states of residence.
In the past Republicans and Democrats would work together for the good of the people. No longer. Cooper is a Blue Dog Democrat…willing to work across party lines.
In Tennessee, the legislature only needs a simple majority to override the Governor. The infamous Jeremy Durham got a law passed that says the Governor can’t start legislation on medical care. Governor Haslam’s attempts to expand Medicaid have not been forceful or focused enough to overcome the legislature’s resistance. In the South there’s a strong prejudice that if you are poor, it’s your fault.
An excellent book on Health Care in the U.S. ,that he uses in his classes at Vanderbilt, is “Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We know about Healthcare is Wrong” by David Goldbill. (I ordered a used paperback on Amazon for $8.07 including mailing.)
Jim Cooper has a website where you can sign up for email newsletters: http://www.cooper.house.gov with updated information about issues that impact Middle Tennesseans.
Most effective means of contacting legislators is old fashioned snail mail letters with a logical presentation of your opinion (not based on misinformation from face book). He says that Tennessee’s Republicans in the U.S. Congress, Alexander and Corker, are reasonable moderates, which makes it definitely worth writing them sensible non-acrimonious letters.
But he says to make your opinions known to all of your elected officials whether by email, phone calls, faxes, post cards, or a snail mail letter. Check the website http://www.tn.gov for information on how to contact our state legislators and for information on bills currently in committee or coming up for votes.  For U.S. Congressional information check usa.gov/elected-officials .