Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Recommended Books

Hal Luft presents a comprehensive new proposal that would create a system with the quality of care patients want, the flexibility clinicians need and the internal dynamics to continually improve the value of health care. SecureChoice is a plan that restructures payment for medical care, harnessing the flexibility and responsiveness of the market by aligning the incentives of clinicians, hospitals and insurers with those of the patient. It uses the accountability of government to ensure transparency, competition and equity.		America spends more than any other developed nation on health care—$2.1 trillion in 2007 alone. But 47 million Americans remain uninsured, and of those Americans who are insured, many suffer from poor health. In his ground-breaking proposal, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel offers up a plan to comprehensively restructure the delivery and quality of our health care. By eliminating employer-health care and establishing an independent program to evaluate health care plans and insurance companies, he offers a no-nonsense guide to how government can institute private insurance options that will allow each of us a choice of doctor and plan.
Dr. Regina Herzlinger, a professor at Harvard Business School and one of the country's foremost health care analysts. She has won numerous awards and has lectured on health care hundreds of times. She has been named by Modern Health Care as one of the most powerful people in health care. In her book Who Killed Health Care?, Herzlinger exposes the methods of those who have crippled America's health care system and outlines a bold new plan for a system to deliver affordable high quality care to everyone.		Mr. Cannon is the Cato Institute's director of health policy studies. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare and the Second Amendment. Cannon has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, C-SPAN, Fox News Channel and NPR.
Help lower health care costs with the best self-care guide on the market. Presented in an easy-to-read, step-by-step format, this reference provides up-to-date information on over 300 health topics. It instantly turns your bookshelf into a health information center. You can become the head of your family's medical team.		Using cutting-edge technologies and consumer-driven alternatives, Christensen, Grossman and Hwang show business, insurance companies and health workers how to lower costs, improve care and streamline the process, benefiting companies, doctors and patients alike. This is real innovation at work, an eye-opening manifesto that's sure to spark international debate—and much-needed change—for generations to come.
The problems of medical care confront us daily: a bureaucracy that makes a trip to the doctor whorse than a trip to the dentist, doctors who can't practice medicine the way they choose, more than 40 million people without health insurance. "Medical care is in crisis," we are repeatedly told, and so it is. Barely one in five Americans think the medical system works well. David M. Cutler, a Harvard economist who served on President Clinton's health care task force and later advised presidential candidate Bill Bradley. One of the nation's leading experts on the subject, Cutler argues that health care has in fact improved exponentially over the last fifty years and the successes of our system suggest ways in which we might improve care, make the system easier to deal with and extend coverage to all Americans.		Though toutes as perhaps the best in the world, the American medical system is filled with hypocrisies. Our health care is staggeringly expensive, yet one in six Americans have no health insurence. We have some of the most skilled physicians in the world, yet one hundred thousand patients die each year from medical errors. In this gripping, eye-opening book, award-winning journalist Shannon Brownlee takes readers inside the hospital to dismantle some of our most venerated myths about American medicine. Using vivid examples of real patients and physicians, this book debunks the idea that most of medicine is based in sound science and shows our health care system delivers huge amounts of unnecessary care that is not only expensive and wasteful but can actually imperil the health of patients.
Sort through the myths, secrets and misconception of the U.S. health care system to learn what you need to know to make wise decisions about your health care future. In these pages you will find a simple understanding of U.S. health care, how you can control it and how the outcome of the health care debate may determine the quality and length of your life. Also find out how the United States compares to the health care systems in other modern nations, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, Japan, France and Germany. America does not have a health care quality crisis—it’s the cost of health care that’s the issue. Tomorrow’s health care, when compared to today, can be more exciting, more beneficial, save more lives, reduce more suffering and give you more for your health care dollar if you make the right choice.

For more book recommendations, visit NAHU's website.

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