|  | Author: T. R. Reid
Publisher: The Penguin Press
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  153 reviews
Sales Rank: 575
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 1594202346
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.10973
EAN: 9781594202346
ASIN: 1594202346
Publication Date: August 20, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New Book direct from the publisher. Ships immediately from New York. Please allow up to 15 days for delivery. Returns accepted. Satisfaction guarantee.
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Showing reviews 21-25 of 153
 If you read only one book about our healthcare system, this is the book. January 17, 2010
Aziza (San Francisco)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
T.R. Reid has done a great job of showing the healthcare systems in other countries. It's eye-opening, and I recommend this book to all my friends.
Should be REQUIRED reading for every congressperson and senator January 15, 2010
Lynn Ann Gries (Cleveland OH)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This is the best overview of comparative healthcare systems I have read. I have been searching for a simple explanation of a complex topic and here it is. Kudos to Mr. Reid for all of his dedicated research on the subject, his funny and engaging writing style and his no-nonsense approach. Now if we could just get all the politicians to read this book we'd be all set.
 "Healing" informs and entertains about a topic important to Americans. January 14, 2010
C. J. Bondi
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Mr. Reid uses an international journey to fix a recurrent shoulder problem as a means to discuss the U.S. health care system, and how it compares with those in other rich democratic countries.
The book's content falls short of its title because its arguments toward "healing" necessarily leave open some important questions. The author convinces the reader that much can be improved in U.S. health care, and that, were we to open our minds to other developed countries' experiences, we could learn and benefit. Hence, "healing" is aspirational, and as an introduction, perhaps an important first step.
Mr. Reid's scope is wide, reminding us of the role of historical eras and political cultures, and how they relate to a nation's approach to healthcare. For example, Germany's "Bismarck" model (competing nonprofit insurers, private doctors) was founded in a search for unity among principalities in the late 19th century, and Britain's "Beveridge" model (government as single payer and hospital owner, private doctors), attempted to mitigate class inequities and resource constraints for a fallen world power. In Canada's National Health Insurance (state-provided insurance, supplemented by private insurers) model, each province manages premiums and payments to insure its entire population, providing a degree of equal access in a linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse country. The United States' "out of pocket" (actually, a composite) model organizes delivery and financing according to one's station in life (e.g., the VA for veterans, the IHS for American Indians, Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for the elderly, employer-provided insurance for large company workers, and out-of-pocket for the very rich or out-of-luck), expressing a balance of powerful interests among a varied and seemingly contented population.
Reid's book suggests some of the right questions. For example, physician pay levels in France, Germany, and Canada are much lower than in the U.S., but their governments pay (partially in Canada) for medical education: How much of U.S. pay levels are justified by the private cost of training? Many of Japan's hospitals are underfunded, achieve narrow margins, or depend on corporate support: How do infrastructure costs influence health quality and per capita healthcare costs across nations? The rich, diverse, and capitalist Swiss Federation (small, but with a population greater than 38 of the United States) overturned the exclusionary effects of for-profit insurance by uncoupling health insurance from employers; passing an individual mandate; and (1) requiring private nonprofits to provide a base level of insurance, while (2) allowing for-profit insurers to reimburse supplemental services: Is "solidarity" more important to the Swiss than it is to the U.S., now facing unprecedented economic and national security challenges?
By providing an entertaining, informative, and accessible survey of other countries' healthcare financing and delivery systems, Mr. Reid has provided a valuable addition for the current events reader.
Continental Drift is Hurting Healthcare in America January 10, 2010
Daniel Murphy (Redmond, OR USA)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
So that you know my perspective from the start, I'm a primary care (family practice) physician that has worked in settings ranging from "socialized" medicine (the Indian Health Service for three years), to academic (teaching interns and residents in the University of California at Davis program for eight years) to private practice (the last 14 years of my life). I've worked, in short, in settings that were free care for all (Indian Health Care), free care for most all (teaching programs largely work with Medicare and/or Medicaid populations) and free care for none (fee for service private practice).
T.R. Reid, in The Healing of America, has done a favor for anyone that has a serious interest in how we approach healthcare in America. In a highly readable form, filled with both facts and interesting anecdotes, in less than 250 pages Reid brings the reader up to date with the rational arguments for healthcare reform in the world's most economically powerful nation.
Reid suffers from a chronically sore shoulder, and in a wonderful literary device, he leads the reader on a tour of healthcare systems across the world by checking in with doctors in England, France, the U.S, Germany, India, and Canada to see how his shoulder would be treated, and what it would cost him out of pocket. The results provide a terrific matrix for a discussion of the relative merits of the many different ways that industrialized, and almost industrialized (China, India) nations provide healthcare to their citizens. A trip to Taiwan to examine its recent quantum leap into providing healthcare to all its citizens is included.
Far less polemical and much more factual than Michael Moore's entertaining but distorted rant, Sicko, The Healing of America is not, however, entirely free of moral challenge. Reid points out that back when Americans were cleaning up the vast internal damage of our Civil War, Germany's leader Bismarck asked himself a simple question: do the people of my country deserve healthcare available to all. He answered yes, and in the second half of the 19th century the first national healthcare system was born. Other industrialized nations, one by one, asked themselves the same question. All but one answered the same way: Yes. The lone dissenting answer was from America, who despite the efforts of seven previous presidents, and now Obama, lacks healthcare coverage for a very substantial portion of its citizens.
Which brings me to the tragedy of continental drift. Americans are neither stupid nor overly stubborn, and we are often compassionate. I fear that the lack of progress that we've made towards addressing the urgency of healthcare for the uninsured (a daily, face to face reality in my office practice) is the result more of isolation than of arrogance or lack of ability to innovate. If the industrialized world consisted of a Gondwanaland-like continent, and America was surrounded by our neighbors, rather than separated by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, we would be reminded daily, with every border crossing, and with every news broadcast, about how our own healthcare stacks up against that of our peer nations. We would not be able to escape two facts: we are the only industrialized nation that does not provide access to healthcare for all its citizens, AND, it costs much less to provide that universal care than NOT doing so.
The facts about American healthcare have been available to any who cared to look for decades. We spend double the percentage of our GNP on healthcare (and we have a LARGE GNP) that most industrialized nations do. We spend 50% more than firmly capitalist Switzerland, which is our nearest rival in expensive healthcare. And for this incredibly high price we pay, we get healthcare that ranks virtually at the bottom almost any way that you measure it when compared to our European and Canadian neighbors: infant mortality, lifespan, customer satisfaction, treatment of chronic disease, preventative medicine. Even in wait times for needed procedures, only two industrialized nations do worse than we do: England and Canada.
As a physician and as a very proud citizen of the United States, I found The Healing of America invaluable in two ways. First, it reminds us all that the first question to be asked is: as a nation, do we feel that quality healthcare should be available to all? Then, once we've answered that question, it illustrates the multiple paths (very few of which are "socialist") that reach that goal. And after having read those paths, I know two things. It's a project we can accomplish. It's a project that we can do better than it has yet been done.
America, Heal Thyself! January 6, 2010
Ollokot (Utah)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Without going into detail, I will simply say that the many flaws in the U.S. health care system are currently seriously and adversely affecting me and my family on a very personal level. So, as a result, I have closely followed the debate that has raged in Washington and around the U.S. over the past few months regarding health care reform. In order to educate myself on the subject, I have read two books in the past two months. The first one was Money-Driven Medicine by Maggie Mahar, which explained in great detail the complex reasons why America spends so much on health care -- about double per capita of most other industrialized countries and 40-100% more as a percent of our GDP.
The Healing of America was the next book I read. It is the author's attempt to explain and describe how America's health care system compares and contrasts to those other modern industrialized countries. Of course, every country's system has its flaws -- they are all desperate for funding and fail in many instances to adequately meet the medical needs of certain individuals. But the country that stands out uniquely among all other countries is the most wealthy of them all -- the United States, which in all but a very few areas looks pretty dismal. We do have the best (and by far the most expensive) doctors and hospitals in the world, but somehow, despite our ever-increasing excessive spending, our health care severely lags behind and even fails in comparison. By almost every method of measuring, the health care and overall health of Americans is mediocre at best.
But the most significant measurement is the fact that nearly 20% of our citizens have no health coverage at all while all the other countries manage to ensure access to basic health coverage for all citizens. The result of this outrage is that many Americans wait until it is too late to seek medical help for diseases and conditions that might have easily been curtailed or cured. In the process many of these un-insured manage to pass their excessive expense on to society as a whole while forcing the bankruptcy of many of the others. Of the modern industrialized countries only America allows people to routinely die because they fear incurring the personal financial costs of seeking medical treatment. Only America allows insurance companies to profit from denying coverage to those who often need it most and from denying claims for legitimate health care. Only America allows corporations and individuals to profit from over-prescribing treatments. Only America protects the profits of its health care corporations by allowing hundreds of thousands of its citizens to seek bankruptcy protection as a result of overwhelming medical expenses.
I can't recommend this book enough. Every American should read this book because every American could easily, through circumstances that may be impossible to foresee or prevent, fall victim to our health care monster.
Showing reviews 21-25 of 153
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