Product Description

The American health care system is in crisis. Skyrocketing costs and increasing bureaucracy have traumatized consumers and doctors alike. In The Cure, Dr. David Gratzer brings a dose of common sense to this over-regulated area of the American economy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #448771 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 325 pages

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

About the Author
David Gratzer, a licensed physician in the US and Canada, is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. His research interests include Medicare and Medicaid, drug reimportation, and FDA reform.

Nobel laureate Milton Friedman authored the foreword to Dr. Gratzer's newest book, referring to him as "a natural-born economist." In The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care (Encounter Books, October 2006), Dr. Gratzer offers a detailed overview of American health care and makes the case that it's possible to reduce health expenses, insure millions more, and improve quality of care without growing government or raising taxes.

Dr. Gratzer is the author of Code Blue: Reviving Canada's Health Care System (ECW Press, 1999) and is the editor of Better Medicine (ECW Press, 2002), a collection of essays from leading health care thinkers in North America and Europe. He is often quoted across North America and is frequently invited to speak on health reform. He has debated Congressman Gil Gutknecht on drug reimportation at the American Enterprise Institute, has testified before Congress on the Health Care Choice Act, and has keynoted the Long Island Health Care Summit after Senator Hillary Clinton cancelled because of a scheduling conflict. Dr. Gratzer has written for more than a dozen newspapers and magazines and is a peer reviewer for numerous publications and organizations.

Customer Reviews

Ridiculous Bias!
"The Cure" is possibly the most biased, useless book on American health care - omitting problems with conservative nostrums, and overstating issues with government involvement.

"The Cure" begins by relating stories of patients waiting for care in Canada's publicly financed health care system, pointing out that some die as a result. Far more frequently reported deaths in American E.R.s waiting for care are ignored. Gratzer belittles the uninsured problem - pointing out that most reported as such are in that category for only part of the year, while ignoring the fact that coverage breaks create long-term non-coverage of pre-existing conditions and liability for overwhelming medical bills.

Gratzer's prime argument is that restricting patient choices (HMOs; Medicare and Medicaid) brings higher costs - since HMO restrictions are primarily aimed at holding costs down, and most Medicare and Medicaid do not limit choice, I have no idea what this is based on. He then goes on to complain about Medicaid's basically eliminating deductibles - perhaps he'd rather wait until they show up in the E.D.? (A 6/26/08 WSJ article reported that 38% of uninsured delayed/did without care because of cost concerns; 17% of those with insurance did so also.)

Gratzer's ire is next directed at FDA delays in approving new drugs - ignoring the fact that the vast majority of "new" drugs now are "me-too" versions of existing drugs (eg. Vytorin - 20X as expensive as equivalent existing drugs), and a few even are deadly (eg. Baycol, Vioxx, Avandia, Thalidomide). Drug companies complain about billions required to bring new drugs to market, then forget to mention that most of these funds are supplied by government research grants, that much of their research is statistically invalid and/or misleading, and that Americans pay more than any other nation for prescription drugs.

Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) are touted as an alternative to employer-provided health insurance - great if one has a 6-figure income, useless at near minimum wages. Gratzer also ignores the high administrative costs and selective enrollment/disenrollment machinations of insurers - especially those covering small businesses and individuals. Then there are the embarassing comparisons between costs of privately- and publicly-provided Medicare coverage and/or drugs.

Wennberg's practice-pattern variation is covered - way too briefly. Worse yet, Gratzer fails to point out that this presents an ideal opportunity for government intervention to reduce costs while improving quality. (CT angiograms are widely condemned as greatly overused to build revenue while having little medical value, at the same time subjecting patients to cancer-causing radiation 1,000X that of a regular x-ray.) Similarly, the 100,000+ deaths/year due to medical errors. (The latter have been shown to be best addressed through computer-assisted prescribing, steering patients to highest-volume providers ("practice makes perfect"), and intensivists in the ICU.)

The "good news" is that Gratzer correctly identifies the paucity of health care outcomes data as impeding objective consumer choice, then fails to recognize that this has best been addressed to-date by government actions (eg. N.Y. vs. CABG results) and that it is always strenuously opposed by health care providers with capitalist motives. On the other hand, those needing emergency care, especially out of their normal area, are not in any position to use such data - unless enforced somehow by government mandate.

Neither conservatives nor government interventionists (eg. today's New York Times reports that competitive bidding offers considerable savings in medical equipment) have all the answers. Gratzer should start over, using that as a premise.

Because Everyone Seems to Need The Cure
The only moral and practical solution to the health care "crisis" in the United States is to allow the industry to become so profitable that productive geniuses such as Thomas Edison and Bill Gates will work long hours to deliver the best quality health care at affordable prices.

This book lucidly identifies how nearly every problem with the current health care system in the United States stems from too much regulation (although there are isolated cases of fraud.) From reading this book, you will learn, amongst other things:

* The serious error underlying using statistics on health to evaluate the quality of a health care system.
* How health insurance became employer based in the United States.
* The problem with various insurance mandates including: benefit mandates, guaranteed issue mandates, guaranteed renewability mandates and community rating mandates.
* How EMTALA, which prevents hospitals from denying patients emergency medical care, inevitably leads to less hospitals in the long run.
* The detrimental results of President Nixon's HMO Act of 1973.

In addition to identifying many problems, this book offers several market-based solutions. These include extensive calls for specific deregulations, removing price controls and pushing for more Health Savings Accounts. The author also spends a considerable amount of time comparing the U.S.' current health care system to those of various other countries, including but not limited to Canada, Great Britain, Germany, South Africa, Australia and Sweden.

If you appreciate laissez-faire economics and you are concerned about health care in the United States, then this is the book for you!

This author is a fool...
... if he thinks that "The Market" will provide affordable, quality health insurance to the millions of cancer survivors, chronically-ill, disabled, and middle-aged people who would lose their employer-based health insurance under his tax increase proposal. I'll gladly admit that reforms are needed, but this market chaos he proposes is not the answer.