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| Flatlined: Resuscitating American Medicine
ISBN: 9780813546261
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Rutgers University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Health care reform -- United States; Medical policy -- United States;
In this insider's polemic, neurosurgeon and clinical investigator Clifton warns that the U.S. health-care system is dying on the table, the victim of an insurance system using unnecessary, high-tech medical procedures and diagnostic tests to generate more fees, and a pharmaceutical industry pushing two-dollar prescription pills where a 24-cent Aleve would do. Clifton estimates that 30 percent of all delivered health care services (about $700 billion a year) qualify as unnecessary treatment; the results are skyrocketing costs, growing ranks of the uninsured crowding the nation's emergency rooms, and an underserved, often in-the-dark patient class. On the basis of his 30-year career as a neurosurgeon and administrator, with a two-year stint in Sen. Orin Hatch's office, Clifton advocates an independent agency, financed by congress, that would work with doctors and hospital administrators to set standards for treatment and fees, aiming for no less than a "high-performance [U.S.] healthcare system. [providing] quality care at lower cost to all its citizens." An eye-opening, sausage-maker's perspective on contemporary medicine, Clifton's thorough text deserves the attention of policy makers, health professionals, and anyone regularly shuffled (or shoved) through the maze of U.S. health care. (Jan.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Guy L. Clifton, M.D. is a neurosurgeon, clinical investigator, administrator, and health policy advocate. He is the Runnells Distinguished Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and has been frequently included in Best Doctors of America. A 2006-2007 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, he is now devoting himself full-time to health policy reform. |
