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Showing reviews 1-5 of 113
 You Mean They're Not All Socialistic? November 18, 2009
Jay G. Alderson Jr. (Phoenix, AZ)
T.R. Reid actually went there! In his very engaging writing style, he takes us with him to interview doctors, patients, healthcare economists and so on. He had his own bad shoulder examined along with examining the healthcare systems of a number of countries.
While the U.S. ranks at the top in critical care, it ranks far from the top in infant death rates, healthy days over age 65 and longevity. Plus, the ones that outrank us do it on less money per person.
To brand everything that involves the government as "socialist medicine" is demagoguery. Healthcare in various countries comes in all flavors and mixes, such as single payer, private practice, private insurance. Private practice, government insurance. And so on. And the U.S. is itself a mixture.
Great Britain has socialist medicine where the government owns the facilities and the providers are government employees. So does the U.S. with it's VA and Indian Health Services.
France has single payer, private practice coverage. Just like U.S. Medicare. Further, doctors offices have hardly any files or non-medical staff. All electronic and centrally available for access among all of a patient's healthcare providers. No need for a staff of insurance verifiers with a single payer. Plus, by law, the doctors are paid in days.
Reid explains how healthcare works with these various combinations as the takes the reader from one country to another, exposing the strengths and weaknesses of each. Further, he talks about how medical procedure and device, and drug innovation are alive and well overseas.
Perhaps best, the doctors in these countries like focusing 100% on the patient instead of spending so much effort fighting insurance companies.
The book is factual and experiential, not the pure propaganda coming out of the proponents and opponents of various U.S. healthcare proposals.
The goal of the book is to show the reader that more can be had for less. Better healthcare for much less money is not only an idea, it's a reality. There is plenty to copy, if we can just avoid politicizing and polarizing the subject. If you want something besides the political polemics, this is a must read.
An invaluable assessment November 17, 2009
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
THE HEALING OF AMERICA: A GLOBAL QUEST FOR BETTER, CHEAPER, AND FAIRER HEALTH CARE isn't just another coverage of America's healthcare pros and cons: it provides an assessment of various healthcare systems around the world, arguing that solutions to problems already exist in other systems. He travels of wealthy, industrialized democracies like our own and gathers reports from doctors, government officials and patients alike to consider how foreign countries provide quality health care at a reasonable cost. An invaluable assessment.
Everyone should read this book November 16, 2009
Prince (New York)
Given all the confusion and spin out there, this is a book that everyone who has any concerns about the future of healthcare in America should read. It lays to rest many of the myths circulating about the various options under consideration, and does so by analyzing a number of systems employed throughout the industialized world, East and West, fairly stating strengths and weaknesses. The book is easy reading and a deft presentation of what could be a dry and difficult subject.
Why Fear Learning From Our Friends? November 15, 2009
R. WINN (Seattle, WA USA)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
If you never saw the ocean, you might think your local swimming hole is a pretty big body of water.
That's the problem with people who think our American health care system is the best in the world: they have never gone to see if anything is better.
Pride in your local swimming hole is harmless, but health care is life and death. Only an arrogant fool would think that THEY know all the answers, and cannot possibly learn from our friends in Germany, Japan, France, Canada, India and the U.K.. A wise man would go there, try their system, and see what ideas we can borrow for ourselves.
In this book, T. R. Reid does every American a great service by taking his bum shoulder around the world to be looked at and treated. What he finds will surprise anyone who thinks the rest of the world is a socialist hell, burdened by grey bureaucrats staffing drably uniformed Death Panels. The facts that he finds is that each of those nations has a different system, tuned to their particular histories, and with strengths and weaknesses. Most are dominated by private suppliers, e.g. doctors who run their own offices, and full of useful ideas we can employ ... if we are not too prideful.
This book provides an actual experience of seeking health care around the world; this makes it is a direct threat to those who benefit from our current arrangements. Our existing system has enormous institutional inertia. Reid tries to demonstrate that inertia can be overcome, in describing how Taiwan and Switzerland converted their systems around the time that the Clinton initiatives failed. I suspect, unfortunately, that our American system will be a trickier conversion, because the forces arrayed against reform are mightly rich; you cannot take a juicy steak away from a pack of hungry dogs without getting bitten.
If you're in a hurry, you will appreciate that this book is a quick read. While it's got plenty of footnotes so you can verify the assertions and learn more, its organization lends itself to grabbing a quick chapter while you can. I especially enjoyed the chapters about each nation; they were like a short story of a visitor seeking help and happened when he did. I was shocked to discover that, on average, Japanese visit doctors more than twice as often as Americans; France's information technology makes ours look like a joke; even in much-maligned Britain people's lives are saved because there is no financial barrier to coming to the doctor if you have a suspicious lump. Why are Americans afraid to learn these basic facts?
However, I found the most surprising chapter entitled "An Apple A Day". It discusses why our current system works against preventative measures. Since your insurer as a youth will not be your insurer in old age, the former has no reason to do anything that would benefit only the latter. If a private insurer can put off dealing with a problem until the patient turns 65, the private insurer may not have to deal with it at all! It is a perfect example of how what is economically efficient in individual health PAYMENT transactions results in systemic inefficiency in the overall health CARE system.
However, the most important chapter may be "The First Question". Ultimately health care is not a financial question; it is a moral question. What kind of nation are we? What kind of people are we?
If we are content that a woman shall live or die depending solely upon whether she is the president of a company or its minimum-wage floor-mopper, then we need do nothing. We have that system already. Of course, we can't be very proud of that; it's basically a return to the hells of Upton Sinclair.
If, however, we are a more decent people, we believe that all of us should have a good chance at life. Life is not a luxury to be reserved, but a necessity to be shared by to all members of our community. And, best of all, as this book shows, we have friends in other nations who can show us how they did it.
It's our choice.
Health care in the real world looks like this November 13, 2009
Dogbert (Seattle, WA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Reid has written a book that can and should be read by everyone in favor of real health care reform instead of revenue enhancement for the pirate health care insurance industry.
In this book he wanders a select world in theoretical search of a treatment for an old shoulder problem which started in his youth. As he visits five different countries, he does the research on the health care system and speaks with professionals as he follows the path offered in each country to treat his shoulder. He addresses the variance in approach and result in each.
There is a very interesting chapter on the history of the different systems currently in place around the world. For those who automatically fear the word "socialism" he points out that most developed countries do not, in fact, resort to socialized medicine. That is what the book is about.
This book explains why a frequent question I get from my Canadian family members is "Are you people nuts?" when ever the question of health care comes up. Reid also discusses the Canadian system's current problems frankly.
For those with a good understanding of "socialist" health care insurance this is a bit on the easy reading level but I believe it contains meat for every diner (or carrots for every vegan) and can/should be read by the sensei master of the issue as well as the initiate. Sadly, the folks who should read this probably never will as it upsets most of the scurrilous arguments being raised about health care insurance AND delivery that are being spread by those who serve the big money boys at Cigna, Aetna, UHC et. al...
Critically, the book is a bit shallow for its attempt to remain readable and the sample of five nations is a bit limited. Also, his examination remains superficial but within what I suspect Reid intended, a book that would be read by a larger audience than something that would appeal to a health care insurance wonk.
Very well written and entertaining, Reid takes an honestly turgid subject and makes it interesting and understandable. The book is short and would make a terrific textbook for groups looking to educate others about the need for single payer health care insurance but the classroom would have to be filled with people who are willing to look that they might see. The willfully blind will not go there.
This would be a terrific Christmas gift for those you love...
At the very least buy it, read it, pass it on.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 113
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