The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Hardcover)

by David Gratzer (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
We are surrounded by medical miracles: polio has been eradicated; childhood leukemia is now treatable; death by cardiovascular disease has declined by two-thirds in the last fifty years. Yet while American medicine has never been better, angst over American health care has never been greater. Why is American health care such a mess? In this path-breaking book--Nobel laureate Milton Friedman calls it "fascinating and thorough"--Dr. David Gratzer goes to the heart of the problem, showing that the crisis in American health care stems largely from its addiction to outmoded and discredited economic ideas. What needs to be done? Dr. Gratzer mounts a bold and provocative argument, rejecting the conventional wisdom that socialized health care is compassionate and that top-down government agencies like the FDA actually save lives. Instead, he prescribes a strong dose of capitalism. The Cure offers a detailed overview of American health care, from economics and politics to medical science. Weighing in on the most controversial topics in health care, Dr. Gratzer makes the case that it's possible to reduce health expenses, insure millions more, and improve quality of care while not growing government or raising taxes. An award-winning author and essayist, he is a master storyteller, enlivening his book with anecdotes, interviews, and stories drawn from his own extensive clinical experience. He details the cardiac woes of Robert E. Lee and Dick Cheney, describes a chat over coffee with Canada's foremost private medical entrepreneur (an acquaintance of Fidel Castro, as it happens), and explains the evolution of his own thinking, from advocating HillaryCare as a medical student to promoting individual choice and competition today. The patient is in critical condition; Dr. Gratzer diagnoses the disease and prescribes the cure.

From the Back Cover
"David Gratzer is a practicing psychiatrist who combines firsthand knowledge of medical practice in both his native Canada and the U.S. with an independent point of view and a rare capacity for lucid exposition of complex technical material. . . If you want a well-written, interesting yet authoritative and thorough account of what is wrong with medicine today and how to cure American health care, this is the book for you."

- Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, Economics (from foreword to The Cure)

"The Cure is a must read for all students of health care policy. Dr. Gratzer correctly diagnoses the U.S. health care system's problems and proposes workable solutions to fix them. His ideas will help reign-in costs while, at the same time, preserve necessary incentives for quality-of-life enhancing innovations."

--John F. Cogan, Senior Fellow, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University

"David Gratzer's well written book should be in the reading list of anyone interested in health care reform. In five-sixths of the U.S economy, we look to markets as an organizing mechanism; in the one-sixth of the economy represented by health care, public policy has frustrated markets, with adverse consequences for cost, access, and quality. Gratzer's capitalist manifesto is a shot in the arm; with it, the much that's right with American health care can grow."

--R. Glenn Hubbard, Dean and Russell L. Carson Professor of Finance and Economics, Columbia Business School; and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers.

"The caduceus is an apt symbol for medicine, given the bureaucratic snake pit the American health care system has become. Dr. David Gratzer skillfully wields Occam's razor to shave away the Byzantine rhetoric and show us that the cure for health care comes in the simplest of formulas - free markets, less government meddling, and a healthy dose of capitalism."

--Governor Bill Owens, Colorado

"Dr. David Gratzer is uniquely qualified to diagnose and provide a treatment regimen for the US health care system's problems. In this book he performs this function for us, does it with his usual acumen and clarity. He leads us by the hand through the labyrinth of legal, institutional and regulatory events that brought to the point where, at least to some, we are in a health crisis that can only be solved by further movement away from the market and toward a universal centrally controlled system. He thoroughly debunks the notion we can improve the US health care system by becoming more like our neighbors to the North. After taking us there, he shows us why these same legal, institutional, and regulatory events are largely responsible for our predicament and that the popular solution of more of the same is not the answer. He convincingly demonstrates that the only way out is less regulation of, and more freedom for, the providers and customers of health care. This book should be read by anyone involved, or with the hope or potential to be involved, in determining health care policy."

--Tom Saving, Director, Private Enterprise Research Center at Texas A&M University.

"Excellent addition to the emerging call for empowering patients rather than government bureaucrats with control of the health care dollar, written by someone with an expert view from the inside!"

--Scott W. Atlas, MD, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Professor, Stanford University School of Medicine

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 325 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; 1 edition (October 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594031533
• ISBN-13: 978-1594031533
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #203,345 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Well informed view from the trenches, November 30, 2006

By	James F. Strasma "strasma" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm surprised to be the first to review The Cure, but it's a good enough book to have a review even if it has to be mine. I read this last week, along with Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care, by Arnold Kling. I enjoyed them both equally, would recommend both as suitable introductions to understanding the problems of our current health care system and frequently-proposed alternatives.

The strong point of this book is that the author is licensed in both the U.S. and Canadian health care systems, and very familiar with both. Proponents of alternatives to our current system often seem to overlook the fact that all existing alternative systems also have problems, which cannot be improved by mere ignorance.

Combining this book's real world experience with the Kling book's hard-headed focus on economics provides much to chew over in the debates surely about to begin again in the U.S.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Because Everyone Seems to Need The Cure, May 11, 2008

By	Doug (Washington D.C. area) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Paperback)

The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care is an excellent resource on health care economics and the history of health care policy. The author is a free market economist, a physician and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. This book has been endorsed by Milton Friedman so should be of appeal to free market advocates.

Dr. Gratzer persuasively argues that the fundamental problem with U.S. health care is too much government regulation. To argue this, Dr. Gratzer first notes how the employer-based health coverage arose as an unintended side effect of a tax law, which allowed employers to write off health care expenditures for their employees. Moreover, Dr. Gratzer argues that both Democrats and Republicans have both essentially offered more government regulation as the solution to health care, which has not worked. The Democrats, such as the LBJ Administration, promoted enormously inefficient programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. The Republicans, have promoted bureaucratic HMOs, which have led to similar large-scale inefficiencies.

Driving this point further, Dr. Gratzer greatly details the harmful economic consequences of government regulations in health care. For example, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) forbids hospitals from denying any patient for emergency care. The economic reality is that this leads to hospitals suffering economic losses by being forced to treat patients, regardless of if they can pay for the care, which ultimately leads to the closing of hospitals. Furthermore, insurance mandates, such as benefit mandates, rating mandates and bans on out-of-state insurance, restrict competition and lead to higher insurance premiums. Dr. Gratzer also thorough analyzes the harmful economic consequences of the FDA, Medicare, Medicaid and much more.

This book also dispels many common myths about the quality of U.S. health care. For example, statistics are often cited to argue that Canadians and/or Europeans have higher life expectancies than U.S. citizens. Dr. Gratzer argues that such studies mistakenly compare statistics on *health* when they should be on *health care*. There numerous lifestyle habits that differ between cultures, such as frequency of exercise and diet, which effect health. Dr. Gratzer proposes examining statistics on cardiac arrest patients, to see which country offers better treatment. In these respects, Dr. Gratzer argues that the U.S. system is clearly superior to its universal health care counterparts.

As one can infer, Dr. Gratzer proposes free market solutions to fix American health care. Specifically, he proposes drastically reducing the various regulatory excesses that he delineates throughout his book as well as embracing Health Savings Accounts. As always, Dr. Gratzer corroborates his arguments with real-world success stories, such as the success of Whole Foods' adoption of HSAs for its employees.

I highly recommend this book to all fans of free market capitalism with an interest in health care policy.

23 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect antidote to Moore's Sicko propaganda, September 17, 2007

By	The Doctor (The TARDIS) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

Let me state now that NO ONE is denying that healthcare in the United States is messed up right now, and is facing some SERIOUS issues. Even the most conservative Republican knows this full well and good. This is not even the issue. The real issue should be: would socializing things make our problems better or worse?

Michael Moore, in Sicko, touts Canada's socialized healthcare system, even calling it "free." (It's not free. The government also does not "pay" for it because the government does NOT have any money. Taxpayers pay for it.) Moore is of course conveniently ignoring many well-known facts. The author of Cure was a Doctor in Canada, and saw first-hand the problem with socialized medicine. His book demonstrates that it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Sorry Hillary.

In England and Canada, if you go to the doctor or the hospital, you won't get a bill. Yeah that's great. But the problem that has emerged is that it takes SO LONG to even get in for certain types of treatment that people are DYING OF EASILY TREATABLE ILLNESSES THERE. In England this has gotten SO BAD that more people are dying a year of treatable cancer than from automobile accidents!!! Yes, that's right. The cancer WAS treatable, but by the time they actually get in for treatment, it has advanced to the stage that it no longer is treatable, and the patient dies.

So, if the healthcare in Canada is SO WONDERFUL, then why are so many Canadians flooding our Northern hospitals every year? They come across the border for an appointment they can get right away, when in their own country they would have to wait nine months to a year for treatment. As shown on 20/20, dogs and cats that need surgery in Canada get it faster than humans!

By the way, if you get strep throat and have to wait a month to even get in to see a general practitioner (which is about the typical wait for GPs in Canada), then what's even the point? You'll be better by the time you get in! So, depending on whether what you have is life-threatening or not, YOU'LL MAY EITHER BE BETTER OR UNCURABLE BY THE TIME YOU EVEN SEE A DOCTOR! Who cares if it's "free"? As the Canadian woman on the September 14th episode of 20/20 said who had to come to America for a life-saving surgery that the Canadian system classified as "elective surgery" (whereas the American doctor gave her only a couple weeks to live), "Who cares if they make a profit (in America), I'm alive!"

The wait to see dentists in England is so bad that people are now performing home dentistry. We're not talking teeth cleaning here, but people pulling their own teeth out instead of having professional work done! Lines to get into the dentist in England look like the lines did at the local theater on the opening night of Star Wars Episode III. No thank you!

By the way, if the government-run medical system in Canada is so great, then why does a private clinic now open in Canada EVERY WEEK, on average, even though such clinics ARE ILLEGAL? Furthermore, if these private clinics are illegal in Canada (and they are), then why does the Canadian government do nothing to stop them? BECAUSE THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT KNOWS IT NEEDS THEM, THAT ITS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS CRUMBLING, THAT'S WHY. The prime minister of Canada recently suggested that their socialized healthcare system is on the brink of collapse, and Americans are scurrying to emulate it!

This book is a much-needed reality check after the overlong season of uncritical love surrounding Moore's obscurantist propaganda documentary. In fact, it's too bad this book isn't a documentary itself; it could then act as a more effective counterweight.