Review – Fixing American Healthcare – Richard Fogoros, MD

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 frightening truths:

• We ration care, we just don’t call it that
• Doctors have been strong armed into putting the interests of employers, insurance companies and the government ahead of patient interests
• Money talks and when your insurer is a for-profit company they are obligated to make the highest profits possible and they put their profits ahead of your health
• Private insurers intimidate doctors to ration care and increase corporate profits
• Money talks and when your government is trying to save money they put their budget ahead of your health
• The government intimidates doctors to ration care and decrease spending
• Scientific studies are manipulated to support rationing of care
• Doctors have been complicit, through action and inaction, in destroying the patient-doctor relationship and consequently supported covert rationing of care

 

Almost no one is blameless when it comes to being responsible for the mess we are in.

Dr. Fogoros shows us how who pays for your care and who decides what care you can and can’t have determines the quality of the system we have and the care we receive.   He shows us how insurers and our government programs, Medicare and Medicaid, ration care without our knowledge and consent, sometimes hiding behind suspect science.    

And he shows us how we will have to ration care because we just can’t pay for everything for everybody.  Americans have a “no limits” mentality when it comes to the care we want.  Unfortunately we do have a limited budget and will need to learn to ration care openly and with compassion.        

Besides the powerful insight he gives us into the real workings of medicine he gives us a blueprint for getting out of the mess and his solution starts where it should, with the patient and the patient-doctor relationship.  Patients and doctors need to get back to the root of excellent care in our country and that is the relationship that they have.   

This book should be on your reading list if you are a health care consumer, doctor, patient or health care reformer.

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