George Halvorsen | Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User’s Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care: George C. Halvorson: Books

George C. Halvorson. Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User’s Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care (Hardcover), Productivity Press; 1 edition (May 27, 2009)

Written by one of the leading authorities in the industry, this book provides a basic primer on the American health care system. Using simple-to-understand language supplemented by insightful anecdotes and examples, the author cuts through the thicket of health care reform rhetoric to offer a step-by-step blueprint for achieving real improvements in health care delivery, as well as putting curbs on growing health care costs. He explains how health insurance works in the U.S. compared with the rest of the world and outlines the barriers to American reform. He also discusses why health care costs are going up so rapidly and sets realistic goals for care improvement.

via Amazon.com: Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User’s Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care: George C. Halvorson: Books.

Book | Ethical Issues in Rural Health Care

Ethical Issues in Rural Health Care. Edited by Craig M. Klugman and Pamela M. Dalinis. Baltimore, MD, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008. 224 pp, $50. ISBN-13: 978-0-8018-9045-1

Are ethics different in rural areas than in the big city? This collection of 12 essays provides a careful look at how ethical issues are perceived, noticed, ignored, or dealt with in rural health care. The contributors make clear that perceptions of ethics that come from urban and academic health care centers may need to be adjusted in dealing with the rural environment.

The book is divided into 3 sections. The first provides an overview of what is meant by rural and general ethical issues in rural health care. The second section consists of 3 essays by rural health practitioners. The third and final section examines specific ethical issues in the rural setting. The book provides an illuminating look at questions of culture, character, regulation, social justice, and organizational response. As a reader who has predominantly practiced medicine and taught ethics in urban medical environments, I found the book fascinating . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Myles N. Sheehan, SJ, MD, Reviewer
Leischner Institute for Medical Education
Stritch School of Medicine
Loyola University Chicago
Maywood, Illinois
msheeh1@lumc.edu

Source:  JAMA — Ethical Issues in Rural Health Care, May 27, 2009, Sheehan 301 (20): 2162.

Book | Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer

Shannon Brownlee. Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer, 2d ed. New York: Bloomsbury, 2008; 320 pp., $16.

Shannon Brownlee is both journalist and crusader. As a journalist, she rightly makes no claim to having done original research. Professionals who are familiar with the field therefore will learn little or nothing new from her well-crafted account of the current state of research on health care outcomes. But they will surely appreciate her unerring ability to draw her readers into her elegant narrative with a well-placed anecdote or interview. The artful juxtaposition of the personal touch with the statistical indictment of the U.S. health care system may well sway lay readers who might otherwise continue to think, perhaps erroneously, that American medical care is, almost without question, the world’s best.  Reviewed by Richard Epstein.  More at: Overtreated, Or Overregulated? — Epstein 28 (3): 920 — Health Affairs.