 | Overtreated: Why Too Much Medicine Is Making Us Sicker and Poorer by Shannon Brownlee
Buy new: $10.88 / Used from: $3.92 A much-honored book that ought to be read by many more people, it makes the argument (and nails it down), counter-intuitive for many, that Americans are heavily over-treated.
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 | 50 Meds: for a Sick Health System by Randy Stapilus
Buy new: $13.95 / Used from: $34.02 My own book - unique so far as I can tell in its collection of useful solutions for a many-headed problem. Most other books come at the issue from a specific policy (or, sometimes, political) angle; this one takes the broad view. And does it briefly, with 50 specific suggestions within 168 pages.
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 | Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much by Maggie Mahar
Buy used from: $9.48 Where does all the money go - and why the intense pressure to pull more and more of it into the medical industry, to the point of bankrupting the country? This books offers some excellent thoughts about all that.
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 | Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America by Ezekiel J. Emanuel
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $5.10 The title notwithstanding, there are many aspects to the health care mess that Emanual doesn't quite get to in this (admirably) brief book. But he does make an excellent case for a useful approach on the funding front.
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 | Howard Dean's Prescription for Real Healthcare Reform: How We Can Achieve Affordable Medical Care for Every American and Make Our Jobs Safer by Howard Dean
Buy new: $8.97 / Used from: $2.97 It's political, yes (Dean was chair of the national Democratic Party, after all), and factored through the lens of a practicing doc. But there's a lot of value here. Dean is unafraid to look at a lot of options.
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 | Who Killed Health Care?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem - and the Consumer-Driven Cure by Regina Herzlinger
Buy new: $17.79 / Used from: $11.49 One of the books with a clear idea about one useful approach, but by itself gets only part of the job done. Much more consumer involvement in health care, especially on the insurance and finance side, would be extremely useful, and Herzlinger makes the case for that admirably. Regardless, a good read and recommended.
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 | The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid
Buy new: $15.17 / Used from: $13.84 Ideally, this should have come out in 2008, preceding a lot of the health care discussion. And it has been criticized on several grounds. But Reid provides a mass of highly useful information about health care in various places and how it compares - vastly more useful on this subject that just about anything available (comprehensively) elsewhere.
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 | Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy (Bk Currents) by Ted Nace
Buy new: $11.53 / Used from: $5.18 Not a health-policy book, but its subject casts a shadow over the industry: How the rise of corporations, and the corporate law we now live with, influence how life is lived (or not) in today's society. This may sound a little abstract, but the results of what Nace here talks about most certainly are not.
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 | Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business--and Bad Medicine by Donald L. Barlett
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $6.99 Another view of health care in America as a business, and how it has led to some bad medicine.
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 | The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care by David Gratzer
Buy new: $12.21 / Used from: $7.54 Call this an alternative point of view: That the real problem with American health care isn't the business side but an overbearing regulatory side. Put me down in general disagreement. But put it on the book shelf, as a bracing reminder of alternate views, for nuggets of insight and the useful cautionary notes.
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 | Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis---and the People Who Pay the Price by Jonathan Cohn
Buy new: $10.17 / Used from: $4.49 After reading Gratzer, check out this strong polemic for a single-payer system.
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 | Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis by Tom Daschle
Buy new: $9.04 / Used from: $8.49 Another political-based book, but one with some unusual and compelling policy suggestions (written by a *former* senator, which may help in terms of candor).
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