Health Care for Seniors

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care

Description

Bestselling author T. R. Reid guides a whirlwind tour of successful health care systems worldwide, revealing possible paths toward U.S. reform.

In The Healing of America, New York Times bestselling author T. R. Reid shows how all the other industrialized democracies have achieved something the United States can't seem to do: provide health care for everybody at a reasonable cost.

In his global quest to find a possible prescription, Reid visits wealthy, free market, industrialized democracies like our own-including France, Germany, Japan, the U.K., and Canada-where he finds inspiration in example. Reid shares evidence from doctors, government officials, health care experts, and patients the world over, finding that foreign health care systems give everybody quality care at an affordable cost. And that dreaded monster "socialized medicine" turns out to be a myth. Many developed countries provide universal coverage with private doctors, private hospitals, and private insurance.

In addition to long-established systems, Reid also studies countries that have carried out major health care reform. The first question facing these countries-and the United States, for that matter-is an ethical issue: Is health care a human right? Most countries have already answered with a resolute yes, leaving the United States in the murky moral backwater with nations we typically think of as far less just than our own.

The Healing of America lays bare the moral question at the heart of our troubled system, dissecting the misleading rhetoric surrounding the health care debate. Reid sees problems elsewhere, too: He finds poorly paid doctors in Japan, endless lines in Canada, mistreated patients in Britain, spartan facilities in France. Still, all the other rich countries operate at a lower cost, produce better health statistics, and cover everybody. In the end, The Healing of America is a good news book: It finds models around the world that Americans can borrow to guarantee health care for everybody who needs it.

Reviews

Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-29
Summary: "Best book on health care"

This is an excellent book on health care reform. A very readable explanation of how health care works in different countries. It also explains why American health care is more expensive than in countries with universal coverage, yet leaves many people without adequate care.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-24
Summary: "Everyone who questions the need for healthcare reform should read this book!"

T.R. Reid takes the reader on a journey to explore healthcare in many of the industrialized world countries. Through the personal search for a solution to a chronically painful injury, he describes the various approaches to diagnosis and treatment, physical structure of the healthcare system and provision of service, costs associated with healthcare in that country and a comparison of the systems with their successes and failures. This book is very enjoyable, well-written and provides an in-depth look into healthcare in the world.

We find that our healthcare system is very complex, fragmented in that it is comprised of all the various types of systems: The Bismarck Model, the Beveridge Model, The National Health Insurance Model and The Out-of-Pocket Model.

It is important to all future generations that America tackles this need for reform and learns lessons from the other less-than-perfect healthcare systems in the world.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-08-01
Summary: "Eye Opening"

"The Best Healthcare in the World" is what I've been told, but saying it doesn't make it so. This book was recomended by my Cardiologist. It is written in with humor and in language a layman can follow - yet intensely informative. The philosophy of the U.S. health insurance industry is whenever they pay any claim, that, is considered a loss. To collect premiums and pay out nothing, would be their perfect world. Therein lies the crux of the problem.

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-06-09
Summary: "Cure for "Healthcare Reform" Blues"

Here is a cure for the diarrhea of the so-called "Health Care Debate" in America. It is anti-diarrheal no American in his "right" mind has ever imagined trying. Why not study the competition and steal all their good ideas? Like the Japanese with their portable Cat Scan machines who know how to keep costs way down; or the British with their immunization incentives who know how to do public health and preventive medicine; or the Germans with their 300 plus insurance companies who really know know what privitization and "choice" means; or the French who take all the voodoo out of our menage of pricing schedules and can save a fortune on records keeping them "all on this itty bitty little card." As our country slides lower down all the major indices of quality of life in the "developed" world, why not "debate" the specifics of what the rest of the 48 leading nations have been doing for decades and in some cases, over a century? Let's put the "care" back into "healthcare" and start to give a...

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Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-05-17
Summary: "A MUST READ for all interested in health care"


This is a must read for everyone interested (pro or con) in the health care debate. It should be required reading for all involved with health care legislation. It is even well written and interesting, neither boring statistics nor a diatribe. READ IT!