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Synopsis
In Flatlined, Guy L. Clifton examines the causes and consequences of the breakdown of American health care, the plight of millions of uninsured families, and the vicious cycle of high prices and low-quality treatment. Filled with first-hand accounts, the book shows how the fee-for-service method of paying doctors and hospitals, and the lack of standards of medical practice result in enough medical waste to cover the uninsured seven times.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review.
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.
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