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Fixing American Healthcare: Wonkonians, Gekkonians, and the Grand Unification Theory of Healthcare (Paperback)

~ Richard (Author), N. Fogoros (Author), Dick Margulis (Editor), dmargulis.com (Editor)
Key Phrases: tooth fairy, health suite, first corollary, Health Scout, United States, Regulatory Speed Trap (more...)
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A great and important book. Fogoros' impassioned and logical arguments will touch a chord in any person who cares about patients. Absolutely required reading in medical school and for any physician. -- Ken Ellenbogen, MD - Professor of Medicine and Vice Chairman of Cardiology, Virginia Commonwealth University

Must reading for all people involved in health care. Reading Fixing American Healthcare is like reading an Ayn Rand novel, a murder mystery (how the doctor-patient relationship has been killed), a philosophical treatise, an investigative report, and an expose of Wonkonian and Gekkonian agendas. Richard Fogoros reasserts the primacy of the doctor-patient relationship by proposing a balanced solution to the healthcare crisis that addresses the needs of society, physicians, patients, business, and government. Quite an accomplishment. --Lynn Carlisle, DDS, SpiritOfCaring.com

Fixing American Healthcare is a much needed antidote to the fruitless incrementalism that dominates contemporary debate. -- David E. Williams - HealthBusinessBlog.com

A great read. A spicy mixture of witty commentary, white-hot criticism, and battlefield wisdom." -- Joseph M. Smith, MD PhD - Vice President, Microelectronic Technologies, Cordis Corporation

Fogoros has written a fine blueprint for radical healthcare reform. Fixing American Healthcare is a survival guide every patient deserves. -- Igor Greenwald - Smartmoney.com

Fogoros ushers America's healthcare system out into the light and asks: What are we pretending not to know?. . .and then proceeds to answer that question. -- Jay Warren, President and CEO, Cameron Health

The nuts and bolts of covert healthcare rationing are surgically exposed in a new book by Richard N. Fogoros. Fogoros is a former cardiologist who has authored textbooks, consults for companies developing new medical technologies, and hosts the heart disease information site at About.com. Now he's written a fine blueprint for radical health-care reform. Fixing American Healthcare is a survival guide every patient deserves. --Igor Greenwald, Smartmoney.com

Unlike others who dance around the topic or try to have it both ways, Fogoros doesn t shy away from embracing bold, unpopular ideas as cornerstones of his solution. Fogoros makes a compelling case that the problem with our current health care system is covert rationing, which has profound corrosive effects. Once the problem is laid out, Fogoros proposes a solution that encompasses open rationing and is characterized by six key principles, one of which is that healthcare coverage must be universal. Presidential candidates who advocate the same thing should study Fogoros s book to see how it might actually be done. --David E. Williams, WorldHealthCareBlog.org


Product Description

Richard N. Fogoros, MD, the popular DrRich of heartdisease.about.com, wants to fix the American healthcare system with your help. In Fixing American Healthcare, you'll learn about: *** Wonkonians, who want to regulate our way out of the mess we're in - and why that cannot work *** Gekkonians, who think the solution to our problems lies in maximizing profits - and why that cannot work *** the Grand Unification Theory of Healthcare and how we can use it to analyze any proposed solution and compare it with all other systems - simply and rationally.

IF you care about protecting yourself and your loved ones when you need healthcare. . . IF you want to work toward fixing the American healthcare system so it works for everyone. . . IF you are a healthcare worker, a patient, a politician, an entrepreneur, an economist. . .IF you are left of center, right of center, or smack in the middle. . . STOP what you're doing and READ THIS BOOK. Find out how you can fight for the healthcare you need, and at the same time FIX AMERICAN HEALTHCARE for everyone.

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Product Details

  • Paperback: 352 pages
  • Publisher: Publish or Perish DBS; 1 edition (October 1, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0979697905
  • ISBN-13: 978-0979697906
  • Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #669,774 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Richard N. Fogoros
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
tooth fairy, health suite, first corollary, teaching hospitals, fourth corollary, ration covertly, open rationing, covert rationing, societal beneficence, healthcare universe, bulleted elements, subconscious collusion, fastidious trials, ration healthcare, retainer practices, antifraud activities, healthcare landscape, managed care techniques, contract medicine, healthcare economists, healthcare rationing, cardiac arrest survivors, gag clauses, biomedical industry, healthcare fraud
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Health Scout, United States, Regulatory Speed Trap, Centralized Individual, World War, Axiom of Industry, Cult of Randomization, Door Number, Social Security, Charlotte Medical Institute, False Claims Act, Supreme Court, Annals of Internal Medicine, Charlie Rose, Rationing Healthcare
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A practical approach to achievable, equitable and effective health care, November 19, 2007
Reviewed by Richard R. Blake for Reader Views (11/07)

In "Fixing American Healthcare" Dr. Richard N. Fogoros provides important insight into the truth about American healthcare. Part I of the book provides a quick overview of grand unification theory of health care (GUTH), a conceptual model that describes the universe of possible healthcare systems. Part II applies the GUTH in an analysis of the current American healthcare system. Part III uses GUTH to develop a solution to the American healthcare crisis.

I found the graphics and the highlighted sidebars, consistent throughout the book, to be extremely helpful to my understanding of the quadrants of the decision-making process in healthcare today.

I was shocked and concerned when I read rationing in healthcare, the fairness argument, the cost of healthcare, fraud, and the demographics of an aging population. The chapter on "Covert Rationing and Managed Care" is alarming and should be a wakeup call to every American to the state of our healthcare system. Dr. Fogoros reveals how some health care plans have corrupted the ethical standards of the medical profession, and the introduction of antifraud measures have been instituted through government intervention. Dr. Rich, often thought to be a radical, speaks out about the impact covert rationing has had on medical science through the use of randomized trials, and end of life medicine.

On a positive note Dr. Fogoros offers a plan that moves toward the upper quadrant of healthcare system. His plan incorporates: individual autonomy and empowerment, open competition, and universal coverage. He maintains rationing must be decided in an open forum, and healthcare services must be prioritized according to clear ethical standards.

I personally found the chapter summaries helpful in reviewing and assimilating the wealth of information presented. The magnitude of information is daunting, however Dr. Rich has a unique communication approach that reaches down to the layman, while addressing the professionals directly involved in the process evolving in American healthcare today.

"Fixing American Healthcare" is a book that should be read by everyone enrolled in an HMO, or other healthcare plan, as well as every plan provider or professional involved in healthcare. Dr. Fogoros, M.D., has come up with priorities that every citizen needs to take to heart, to protect themselves and their loved ones in a time when they will need healthcare.

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5.0 out of 5 stars Everyone has the power to help improve America's healthcare, June 19, 2008
By Mary (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
  
We all know we're facing many challenges in our health care system. Certainly at a national level, we need solutions to deal with the fact that there are 50 million uninsured people in America.

But individually, many of us access our health care through a less-than-perfect system of health insurance and HMOs. And we are up against a challenge that is coming to be known as "covert rationing" -- a term coined Fixing American Healthcare's author Dr. Richard Fogoros, MD -- known as "DrRich." With covert rationing, not only do insurance companies do such obvious things as try to cancel policies when we're sick, but behind the scenes, they are doing whatever they can to systematically deny patients access to specific information, experts, specialists, procedures, treatments, and medications we may need.

But how do we learn about these covert tactics? How do we find out exactly what is going on behind the scenes in doctor's offices, hospitals, as well as the offices of drug companies, insurance companies and HMOs around the country? How can we know what the doctors and insurers and HMOs don't tell us -- and don't want us to know?

The answer: Fixing American Healthcare: Wonkonians, Gekkonians, and the Grand Unification Theory of Healthcare. Full disclosure here: I wrote the foreward for DrRich's book. More disclosure: I happily volunteered to do it, because as a thyroid patient advocate, part of my role for the last decade has been to help expose the many ways our medical system is failing us, as relates to our thyroid disease. I was seeing covert rationing in action -- I just didn't know what it was called until DrRich came along!

There's a bigger picture. Even when we're aware of covert rationing, how it works and the dangers it poses, we need to know what's next. What can we do to protect ourselves and our loved ones from falling victim to it?

That's where DrRich's book shines. Fixing American Healthcare presents what DrRich has called the Grand Unification Theory of Healthcare, GUTH for short. Grand it is, as it explains how doctors, patients, and health care companies all fit together and interact with each other, and how you can navigate that complicated system to make it work better for you, personally. And perhaps most importantly, how you can improve your own odds of getting well, staying well -- even surviving -- in the face of disease or illness. The book also looks forward and lays out a plan to explain how the system could be better if particularly improvements were made.

I know that those of us with chronic diseases can get into our own little worlds of doctors, medications, and treatments specific to our own condition. That makes it harder to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. But I truly recommend that you do, and Fixing American Healthcare is a good place to start.

I'm always urging readers and fellow patients to ask questions, insist on knowing your options, challenge the conventional dogma, and don't believe everything you hear -- whether it's from a doctor, a nurse, a pharmacist, a drug company ad, or a medical journal article. I'm always encouraging people to read, study, learn, and be educated, empowered patients. In Fixing American Healthcare, DrRich refers to people like me as "patients behaving badly." He doesn't intend it as an insult -- actually, it's a compliment. He's talking about patients who ask questions, who do their homework -- those of us who aren't walking around with their heads in the sand.

According to DrRich, if enough of us patients behave badly at the micro level, our grassroots effort will force the system to change at the macro level. So in this way, apart from writing to Congress, or voting for whichever Presidential candidate you think can save America's health care system, we may be able to have an impact on American's health care system.

So the best part is that each and every one of us is part of the solution -- in fact, the solution relies on us.

Whether you are concerned about the care about the quality of your own health care, or the status of health care in America -- or both -- a wonderful first step in your education is reading Dr. Rich Fogoros' Fixing American Healthcare.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Thought provoking, April 30, 2008
Dr. Fogoros foregoes the usual cliches seen in proposing health care fixes. His analysis of our current system, including how we got here, is very insightful, and rings true to someone working in healthcare. American healthcare is very complex and won't be fixed in a sweeping reform, especially by the government, so it is difficult to propose changes in a scientific way, but he backs up his proposals with sufficient anecdotes and facts to make them plausible. A must read for someone interested in the future of our healthcare.
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2.0 out of 5 stars On target, but simplistic
Dr. Fogoros overarching message, that rationing exists already and must be openly addressed by any reform proposal is dead-on. Read more
Published 22 months ago by K. S. JEFFERY

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be on the reading list for all doctors, patients, health care reformers
Dr. Fogoros goes where few other authors on health care reform/transformation can go. He does an extraordinary job taking us inside the health care system and exposes many... Read more
Published 22 months ago by Thomas G. Byrne

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