Title: The Cancer in the American Healthcare System: How Washington Controls and Destroys Our Health Care
Author: Dr. Deane Waldman, MD MBA
Publisher: Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co.
Pages: 302
Genre: Politics/Social Policy
Reviewed by: Dan Macintosh
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Pacific Book Review
The expensive, messed-up health care system in the United States is one diseased patient. It makes sense, then, that a doctor (in this case, Dr. Deane Waldman, MD MBA) writes a diagnoses of this sickly system. He sees this system as cancerous, and two of the biggest causes of cancer cells are insurance companies and government agencies.
Waldman spends a goodly portion of his book detailing the many problems in healthcare. But unless you’re a young person, namely the demographic ‘Obama Care’ is desperately trying to sign up with its plan, you already either know about the many crazy problems with our health system, or you’ve experienced some of these yourself.
While the biggest culprits are insurance companies (who are far too focused on making a lot of money off of citizen’s illnesses) and the government (which ties everything up in an endless supply of red tape), while the biggest symptom of the ailment is high cost. For example, if your doctor prescribes you with a name brand drug, rather than a generic one, and you don’t have health insurance, you may not be able to afford to pay for it.
Other big problems with the system as it stands today are its many bureaucratic roadblocks. As a former pediatric cardiologist, Waldman is especially qualified to weigh in on this especially ugly side of the story. He doesn’t just tell us healthcare is a bureaucratic mess; he goes one giant step further by giving multiple personal examples. One of these instances is the story of a former patient that was born with a rare lung ailment, in addition to a damaged heart. While telling the reader this sad story, Waldman details his struggles with the whole medical care authorization process. He asks, at one point: “Why should some insurance authorization officer who has only a college degree probably in Communications or Art History, tell a licensed physician how to practice medicine?” This is a valid question. When non-physicians have the final say on medical procedures, we’re all in a whole lot of trouble.
Best of all, Waldman doesn’t just leave the reader crying in their beer over a broken healthcare system. He closes out his book with some possible solutions. “To save our patient Healthcare and ourselves at the same time,” he writes, “We must restore OUR control of healthcare, taking control away from cancer that has taken over Washington.” He suggests we move to what’s called direct-pay. This is an arrangement where doctors only accept cash-out-of-pocket as payment for services. To pay for healthcare coverage, Waldman recommends the government put $5,000 into a health savings account for every American, every year. This accumulating funding would be money only used to pay for health coverage, where the patient decides where and to whom they spend this money.
Waldman’s solutions sound a little like the whole flat tax initiative, and in a good way. Once we eliminate many of the fingers in the pie, we’ll likely have a much cleaner system. The bottom line is that we as citizens need to take back our healthcare options. Just as government doesn’t always know what’s best for its citizens in many varying circumstances, governing bodies can’t possibly know what’s best for human heath. The same goes for insurance companies, which are far too greedy for their own (and our) good.
The Cancer in the American Healthcare System: How Washington Controls and Destroys Our Health Care is not just some talking head attempting to sound intelligent while discussing healthcare issues. No, this is a highly personal perspective. Even though Waldman has stopped practicing medicine, he’s never stopped caring about the health of his fellow citizens. This book finds this doctor operating on healthcare cancer with a surgeon’s precision.
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