Catastrophic Care: Why Everything We Think We Know About Health Care Is Wrong

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In 2007 David Goldhill’s father died from infections acquired in a well-regarded New York hospital. The bill, for several hundred thousand dollars, was paid by Medicare. Angered, Goldhill became determined to understand how it was possible that well-trained personnel equipped with world-class technologies could be responsible for such inexcusable carelessness—and how a business that failed so miserably could still be rewarded with full payment. Catastrophic Care is the eye-opening result. In it Goldhill explodes the myth that Medicare and insurance coverage can make care cheaper and improve our health, and shows how efforts to reform the system, including the Affordable Care Act, will do nothing to address the waste of the health care industry, which currently costs the country nearly $2.5 trillion annually and in which an estimated 200,000 Americans die each year from preventable errors. Catastrophic Care proposes a completely new approach, one that will change the way you think about one of our most pressing national problems.

Paperback: 400 pages

Publisher: Vintage; 1 edition (November 5, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 034580273X

ISBN-13: 978-0345802736

Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.9 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (95 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #203,640 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #58 in Books > Business & Money > Insurance > Health #129 in Books > Medical Books > Administration & Medicine Economics > Health Policy #237 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > Public Affairs & Policy > Social Policy

This book should be required reading for anyone who's ever wondered, "well, what exactly is so bad about our healthcare system?" In this fascinating read, David Goldhill approaches the matter of care from the lens of a business person, which I can wholly appreciate. The problems we face in healthcare today, he contends, are primarily a result of a broken marketplace for healthcare. We are not consumers in this system, we are pawns for powerful surrogates to extract profit from.Goldhill takes us on a whirlwind tour of almost literally every facet of care I've never even thought about, from Medicare and Medicaid to the broken rewards systems that are powering the next generation of physicians. Overall, I felt the analysis was incredibly well done and well researched, little was left to the imagination as to why and where our system has failed us, and even though the book itself seems to have come out before the ACA was enacted, it seems mildly prophetic in a lot of ways in showing how a continuation of a broken system can only continue to be broken.I think my favorite part of the book is that it doesn't heavily lean into the idea that America should be like Norway or Finland. It surprised me to learn those systems are also heavily problematic in terms of controlling cost. Rather, a more interesting example forward for America is Singapore, of all places.By the end of the book, we're treated to a comprehensive assessment of how to fix a system that waylays itself with profligate actors that have no incentive to change. In the next 5 years, we're likely to see a collapse in Medicare expenditures in a similar fashion to what happened with the housing industry. Goldhill's solution is elegant and pragmatic, in my opinion.

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