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(More customer reviews)Physician John Geyman, emeritus professor at the University of Washington medical school, lays out a detailed and compelling case for a single-payer national health insurance program for the United States.
Geyman traces the development of the private insurance industry from its non-profit beginnings to the profit-seeking, risk-avoiding behemoth of today. He then dissects industry practices, including denial of coverage, bait and switch, policy cancellation, limited benefit policies, inadequate disclosure, deceptive marketing, and outright fraud.
He debunks the most pervasive myths about health and health care, then discusses how the industry is coming under increasing stress as employer-sponsored insurance declines and individual policies cannot fill the gap because of their exorbitant expense and inadequate benefits.
Chapter Six, "Saving Lives or Saving the Industry?" should be read by every politician in this country, as Geyman eviscerates the incremental "reform" plans of the last 30 years, including failing individual mandate plans like the "Massachusetts Miracle."
Geyman next examines insurance industry spin, the current battle over SCHIP, and the array of forces against fundamental reform. He concludes by outlining a national insurance program which would fold in existing federal programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, financed by payroll and income taxes to replace private insurance premiums. About $350 billion yearly could be saved by administrative simplification and bulk purchasing.
If I could force Barack Obama (or John McCain, for that matter) to read one book, this would be it.
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Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry is Dying, and How We Must Replace It"Geyman's literary voice arises from his unusual professional and political trajectories: from country doctor to academic department chair and prominent journal editor, and from longtime Republican to president of Physicians for a National Health Program . . . a passionate advocate and scholar."—The New England Journal of Medicine
"The raging debate over how to pay for health insurance has missed a profoundly important fact: As big as it is, as tight of a grip it has on American life, the health insurance industry is dying," states John Geyman, MD, in Do Not Resuscitate: Why the Health Insurance Industry is Dying, and How We Must Replace It. Written for lay readers, health care professionals, and policymakers alike, Do Not Resuscitate moves beyond books that decry our current problems to reveal what the trend for more than half a century of increasing costs and decreasing coverage really means. The situation for doctors, patients, caregivers, and even the insured will move from dysfunctional to a complete breakdown over the next decade. In one of many examples Geyman cites, as employers cut costs in a global economy, the cost of health insurance as a proportion of wages is rising to the point where it will consume all average household income by 2025.
John Geyman is professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of The Corrosion of Medicine: Can the Profession Reclaim its Moral Legacy?, Falling Through the Safety Net: Americans Without Health Insurance, and Shredding the Social Contract: The Privatization of Medicare.
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