Product Description

Nationally-known social critic Martin L. Gross skewers the medical prfession with the same sharp pen he used on the federal government in the bestselling The Government Racket, and A Call for Revolution, as well as The Political Racket. Using numerous medical studies, government reports, and his own research, Gross exposes fraud and mistakes by doctors, hospitals and HMOs, costing the public billions of dollars, medical harm, and often loss of life. In addition to his shocking expose, he offers comprehensive solutions to the present chaos of medical care.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2167771 in Books
• Published on: 1998-11-01
• Released on: 1998-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 279 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Over 30 years ago, Gross (a professional gadfly whose earlier critiques have borne down on The Government Racket and The Tax Racket) took on the medical profession with The Doctors. While the field has changed drastically, he once again finds the American physician most at fault. Not that he lets the other sectors of the medical profession off the hook: Gross finds errors and misdeeds among hospitals, HMOs, dentists, private insurers, medical equipment distributors, testing laboratories, the home care industry and nursing homes. In each chapter, he details the health providers' errors, using anecdotes and statistical information gleaned from studies in the field. He cites horrifying cases of hospital error and charges that such iatrogenic (caused by the hospital itself) deaths are often unreported and covered up. While many of his accusations ring true, others seem less plausible, such as his argument that affirmative action has led to the lowering of medical school standards. He advocates decentralization of health care into hospital-centered communities, although why such a concept would bypass all the defects of the present chaos is not clear. Whether it's learning that some 80,000 deaths are either directly or indirectly attributable to infections acquired in hospitals or that med school grads identified only 20% of common heart abnormalities ordinarily detectable with a stethoscope, there's something ghoulishly fascinating about Gross's recitation of incompetence, dishonesty and greed in the medical profession.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Although he repeats much about the perfidy of the present practice of medicine as a business that has lately been aired, alarm-sounder Gross adds important new material. He shows how HMOs encourage--indeed pay--doctors to not give care. For-profit HMOs are especially dangerous, he says, because the bottom line for their administrations is stockholders' dividends and CEOs' high incomes rather than caring for patients. "In truth," Gross writes, "the HMO is not a medical plan at all, but strictly an insurance gimmick." Minnesota has abolished this type of business, and other states should do so as soon as possible, he says. Gross also deals at length with home care frauds and points out questionable elements in medical education and training, especially the current misplaced emphasis on primary physicians when more specialists are needed. On the positive side, he does, however, grant that unnecessary coronary bypass operations have decreased. Finally, he suggests steps to improve medical education, patient care, and the accessibility of medical care. William Beatty

About the Author
MARTIN L. GROSS, has written more than a dozen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z, which began the serious debate over capricious and wasteful government, and A Call for Revolution, as well as The End of Sanity, The Medical Racket and The Conspiracy of Ignorance. His 1995 bestseller, The Tax Racket, exposed the excesses of the IRS and asked for its elimination. He has testified before the U. S. Congress five times. Three of his prior nonfiction works, The Brain Watchers, The Doctors, and The Psychological Society, stimulated public debate in the fields of psychological testing, medicine, and psychiatry, resulting in Congressional hearings and reforms. Mr. Gross has been a member of the faculty of The New School for Social Research and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Social Science at New York University. He lives and works in suburban Connecticut.

Customer Reviews

A POTENTIAL LIFESAVER !
GROSS'S "NO BARS HOLD" APPROACH TO EXPOSING THE CORRUPT HMOs and DISTRACTED PHYSICIANS HAS HAS INFLUENCED ME TO QUESTION MY NEURO-SURGEON'S RECOMMENDATION TO FUSE MY SPINE. INSTEAD, I SEARCHED THE JOHN HOPKIN'S WHITE PAGES, AS MR. GROSS HAD DONE FOR HIS DAUGHTER, AND FOUND A PHYSICIAN THAT PERFORMS AN ENABLING VS. DISABLING SURGERY.

THANKS MR. GROSS FOR WRITING THIS BOOK.

Great book! Everyone should read this. I'm buying several.
It blows the whistle on the medical profession. It even explained to me, for the first time, why I had a nasal voice as a child (for 10 years) after a tonsillectomy. I'm getting a copy for all of my relatives. I know I will be a better consumer and a bigger pain in the butt for doctors after reading this.

A surprising conclusion to an informative book
Any critic of HMOs needs to read this book. You will not find a better defender of your cause than Martin Gross, who also happens to be the most provocative political writer in America today. However, his remedy for the health care industry - a sort of political-community medical hybrid- only covers the last few pages of the book. This soultion, covered in little detail, should cover at least one third of the book. But because it doesn't, I feel cheated of a real solution to Mr. Gross's gripes. The real conclusion that I drew is that the solution to health care lies not with HMO destruction but with HMO reform.