Here's a book I'd like to read

9/16/2009

Somebody had to do this and I guess I'm glad it was a Washington Post foreign correspondent. Reporter T.R Reid had a shoulder injury, so he sought medical advice -- in 10 countries! What he discovered may surprise you as much as it surprised him.

Here are a few comments from a review in today's New York Times:

One Injury, 10 Countries: A Journey in Health Care
By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.
September 14, 2009

With all due respect to the seminar room, the boardroom, the hearing room and the Oval Office, a better vantage point than any of them for evaluating and redesigning our health care system is the hospital room (window bed, please).

The chair next to the bed isn’t bad, either.

Some of us perch on one or the other almost every day, observing the tangled mess that is our current system and mentally designing a dozen better alternatives. But for those who wind up in bed or a chair only when tragedy strikes, T. R. Reid’s new book provides an excellent substitute perspective

...

A person’s last days can be spent in any number of ways. But on the phone pleading with an insurer, that’s only in America.

For the entire review, see http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/health/15book.html?em

2 Comments

Kathleen Scott link

9/20/2009 04:12:37 am

Thanks! I've enjoyed T. R. Reid's NPR pieces. He's got great perspective. This one is particularly timely.

Sarah Rankin

9/22/2009 06:03:00 am

Paula,

As the parent of a child with Down Syndrome and as a survivor of life-threatening illness, I can tell you that one of the most frustrating things about our current system is its inequity. An acquaintance and I, who were being treated for the same disease at the same time (and living in the same state), had very different medication options because her HMO was trying to save money instead of her life. She eventually wound up getting the same medication my docs had prescribed in the first place (which they described as the "standard of care" and which worked beautifully for me), but only after she'd gone to the emergency room to treat side-effects from the substandard protocol. I find this intolerable, and I attribute that kind of craziness to being in a profit-motivated health-care system.