Severed Trust

by Lundberg, George D.

• ISBN13: 9780465042920
• ISBN10: 0465042929
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-03-21
• Publisher: BASIC BOOKS

Summary

This no-holds-barred book includes a new chapter presenting a comprehensive, politically achievable, private-public solution to the health care dilemma-one that preserves the best of the present system, eliminates the worst current problems, and represents our nation's last best chance to contain costs without a government takeover of medicine.

Author Biography

George D. Lundberg, M.D., is Editor-in-Chief and Executive Vice President of Medscape. He was for seventeen years editor of JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. A resident of Chicago, New York City, and Los Gatos, California, he is on the faculties of Northwestern University and the School of Public Health at Harvard.James Stacey was until his retirement in 1999 the Director of Media and Information Services for the Washington Office of the AMA. He is the author of Inside the New Temple: The High Cost of Mistaking Medicine for Religion (1993). He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Table of Contents

Prologue	ix
Introduction: A Medical Memoir	1	(16)
The Enemy Is Us: Why Medical Care Costs So Much and What We Can Do About It	17	(32)
The Question of Queues: Why We Have to Ration Care	49	(28)
The Coverage Circus: Why What You Need Is Not Always What You Get	77	(28)
There Is No Alternative to Medicine: Why People Buy Care Wherever They Find It	105	(22)
Mouse Calls for House Calls: The Benefits, Deficits, and Promotion of Internet Care	127	(28)
A Terminal Profession: Why Medicine Is Under Attack	155	(30)
Uninformed Consent: When Disclosure Is Incomplete, Misleading, or Nonexistent	185	(32)
Disclosures on Death: Why Doctors Should Help Patients Die	217	(28)
The Search for Quality: It All Begins on the Autopsy Table	245	(26)
The Way to Reform: Thinking About a Better System	271	(24)
Patient-Focused Control: Fixing Our Broken Health System	295	(34)
Epilogue: International Health Care Reform	329	(4)
Acknowledgments	333	(2)
Index	335