"The healing of America": a book review and...

The Healing of America: a global quest for better, cheaper, and fairer health care

T.R. Reid 2009 270 pages including notes/sources

ISBN 978-1-59420-234-6

T.R. Reid, who is a longtime correspondent on business matters for the Washington Post, and contributor to National Public Radio, has written a book worth reading. The recent controversy over health care reform has stimulated a great deal of political heat, and very little light. Why not get informed before shooting off your mouth? This book will help. And an added plus, at less than 300 pages, it's way shorter than the legislation now before Congress.

It's got lots of facts, too. Did you know that the good old USA in the year 2005 spent 15.3% of our GDP on health care? Canada, which free market health care fans love to kick around, only spent 9.8% of their GDP on it. Scratch your head over that one for a while, and guess what, we are not any healthier than Canadians.

How about this one: accord to a joint study of the Harvard Law School and Harvard Medical School, the annual number of americans who enter bankruptcy due to health costs is around 700,000. On an average day, 45 million americans have no health care, around 15% of the population. Yup, our current system is working Great!

Reid uses a world tour as a means of explaining the various methods of providing health care to citizens of a nation. there are four main methods:

1. The Bismarck Model: (Germany, Switzerland, France, Japan. Health Care providers are private entities. Yet oddly enough, the providers do NOT make a profit!

2. The Beveridge model: Britain, Italy, Spain, most of Scandinavia. Single payer, government provided. Veterans in the USA also use this model.

3. National Health Insurance model: Canada and South Korea.

4. Out of Pocket. Poor nations around the world. Plus lots of americans. Problem with this approach is that if you don't have money, you wait until you are really bad off before you see a doctor. And then maybe you don't get better.

The weird thing in the USA is that our system is totally mixed up between all four of these systems. If you are over 65, you live in Canada, because you use Medicare. If you are uninsured, you live in Cambodia or one of those places where you pay for health care. Ifyou are a working person under 65, you use the Germany or Japan model. If you are Native American, Military, or veteran, you use the Britain or Cuba system. Why are we so mixed up? Maybe because we are not sure what we really want? Maybe because we use sound bites like "socialized medicine"- a phrase invented over 50 years ago to scare us with visions of communism, despite the fact that Medicare and the Veterans system ARE socialized medicine, and we like both of those systems quite a bit.

Reid explores these complex comparisons of the planet earth's many modes of providing health care, by visiting different nations and asking health care workers to look at his injured shoulder (yes, Reid actually does have a sore shoulder from an old injury). It's fascinating stuff. I have not finished reading it yet, but I enjoy it so far.

If you are in the mood for nonfiction about a very important social and political issue, here ya go.