The Healthcare Labyrinth: A Guide to Navigating Health Plans and Fixing American Health Insurance

The Healthcare Labyrinth: A Guide to Navigating Health Plans and Fixing American Health Insurance

Author: Marc S Ryan

Publisher:

Published: 2022-05-03

Total Pages: 528

ISBN-13: 9781645439936

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The Healthcare Labyrinth is not just a comprehensive guide to navigating health plans--it offers a blueprint for fixing our broken healthcare system. The American health insurance system is anything but simple to maneuver. Health plan enrollees become entangled in an intricate and opaque maze of confusion, often resulting in frustration, regret, and deep debt. In The Healthcare Labyrinth, health plan and healthcare technology veteran Marc S. Ryan seeks to demystify the U.S. healthcare system, helping Americans become wiser consumers and allowing them to navigate the maze with more confidence and certainty. Marc walks through how the current system operates, tracing the dysfunction, high costs, and lack of quality to three major issues: --a lack of affordable universal access; --little focus on wellness, prevention, and care management; and --outrageous pricing, especially compared to other developed nations. Using his decades of experience, Marc outlines a bipartisan blueprint to transform America's unique system without upending the employer-based system. He relies on leading academic, research, and mainstream media sources from across the political spectrum to examine the U.S. healthcare system and compare it to those of other developed nations.


Health Care Regulation in America

Health Care Regulation in America

Author: Robert I. Field

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 0195159683

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Regulation shapes all aspects of America's fragmented health care industry. While the health and lives of patients as well as almost one-sixth of the national economy depend on its effectiveness, health care regulation in America is bewilderingly complex. 'Health Care Regulation in America' is a guide to this regulatory maze.


Priceless

Priceless

Author: John C. Goodman

Publisher: Independent Institute

Published: 2024-09-24

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1598133977

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In this long-awaited updated edition of his groundbreaking work Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman ("father" of Health Savings Accounts) analyzes America's ongoing healthcare fiasco—including, for this edition, the failed promises of Obamacare. Goodman then provides what many critics of our healthcare system neglect: solutions. And not a moment too soon. Americans are entangled in a system with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. It's not just patients that need liberation from this labyrinth of confusion—it's doctors, businessmen, and institutions as well. Read this new work and discover: why no one sees a real price for anything: no patient, no doctor, no employer, no employee; how Obamacare's perverse incentives cause insurance companies to seek to attract the healthy and avoid the sick; why having a preexisting condition is actually WORSE under Obamacare than it was before—despite rosy political promises to the contrary; why emergency-room traffic and long waits for care have actually increased under Obamacare; how Medicaid expansion spends new money insuring healthy, single adults, while doing nothing for the developmentally disabled who languish on waiting lists and children who aren't getting the pediatric care they need; how the market for medical care COULD be as efficient and consumer-friendly as the market for cell phone repair... and what it would take to make that happen; how to create centers of medical excellence, which compete to meet the needs of the chronically ill; and much, much more... Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and decidedly humane in its concern for the health of all Americans, John Goodman has written the healthcare book to read to understand today's healthcare crisis. His proposed solutions are bold, crucial, and most importantly, caring. Healthcare is complex. But this book isn't. It's clear, it's satisfying, and it's refreshingly human. If you read even one book about healthcare policy in America, this is the one to read.


Priced Out

Priced Out

Author: Uwe E. Reinhardt

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-09

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0691208530

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Uwe Reinhardt was a towering figure and moral conscience of health care policy in the United States and beyond. Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of today's U.S. health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country, why this situation is morally indefensible, and how we might improve it.


Inside National Health Reform

Inside National Health Reform

Author: John E. McDonough

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2012-09-03

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0520274520

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A guide to the Affordable Care Act, our new national health care law. An account of the process from the 2008 presidential campaign to the moment in 2010 when the bill was signed into law before anyone had a chance to digest the document. At a time when the nation is taking a second look at the ACA, "Inside National Health Reform" provides essential information for Americans to review the governmental processes and politics in enacting this legislation.


Hope Or Hype

Hope Or Hype

Author: Richard A. Deyo

Publisher: AMACOM/American Management Association

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 364

ISBN-13: 9780814428597

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Annotation Medical science has always promised -- and often delivered -- a longer, better life. But as the pace of science accelerates, do our expectations become unreasonable, fueled by an industry bent on profits and a media desperate for big news?Hope or Hype is a taboo-shattering look at what drives the American obsession with medical "miracles," exposing the equipment manufacturers and pharmaceutical companies; doctors and hospitals too quick to order surgery; the politicians; the press; and our own "technoconsumption" mindset. The authors spread blame for the parade of so-called miracle cures that too often are marginally effective at best -- and sometimes downright dangerous. They examine consumers? eager embrace of medical advances, and present riveting stories of the conscientious doctors and researchers who blew the whistle on ineffective treatments. Finally, they provide sane, practical recommendations for the adoption of new developments. The consequences of questionable practices include costly recalls, billions in wasted money, and the pain and suffering of innumerable patients and their families. In short, they must stop.


Personal Health Navigator: A Patient's Guide to Ontario's Health Care System

Personal Health Navigator: A Patient's Guide to Ontario's Health Care System

Author: Paul Taylor

Publisher: Healthy Debate

Published: 2014-12-08

Total Pages: 106

ISBN-13: 099401080X

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Ontario’s health care system can feel like a maze. In response, some hospitals have introduced patient navigators, who act as guides through the labyrinth of health care services. They help connect patients with the right doctors, resources and therapies, and get answers to patients’ questions. In 2012, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Healthy Debate launched the Personal Health Navigator blog. Over the past few years, we've answered nearly 100 patient questions. In collaboration with our Citizens’ Advisory Council, we have selected 33 of the best articles for this free e-book. They span a variety of topics, from family doctors to cancer and surgery.


Health Your Self

Health Your Self

Author: Janice M. Horowitz

Publisher: Post Hill Press

Published: 2021-05-18

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1642933546

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Know what’s driving your doctor’s decisions—and how to protect yourself. Through compelling real-life stories, Health Your Self reveals the forces that compromise your medical care, and arms you with the tools to navigate around them. • When a doctor refers you to a colleague in a hospital, there’s a hidden influence: he gets a bonus. • When a psychiatrist prescribes medication to school children, it might have more to do with the colossal overreach of drug companies than something your kids actually need. • When you are handed unnecessary painkillers at urgent care, the doctor could be bucking for a five-star rating on a patient satisfaction survey. Enough of those, he gets a raise. Health Your Self turns you into a smart, practical—and brave—healthy skeptic. “Backed with her twenty years of health reporting for Time, Janice M. Horowitz produced this eminently readable guide that empowers you to get the healthcare you really need. More knowledge, less waste, better care.” —Frank Lalli, the Health Care Detective™ at NPR’s Robin Hood Radio “This is a controversial book and I’m ready for the tough questions my patients are bound to ask after reading it.” —Jane Farhi, Cardiologist, Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City “Finally, your own personal and portable patient advocate! Chock full of personal stories, this book is a public service. You’ll wind up the smartest person in the waiting room.” —Lillie Rosenthal, D.O., New York City “Health Your Self takes you behind the privacy curtain. When you turn the last page, you realize you were just handed everything it takes to get the best medical care possible.” —Leslie Laurence, Co-author of Outrageous Practices


HealthConsuming

HealthConsuming

Author: Jane Sarasohn-Kahn

Publisher:

Published: 2019-05

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780578481395

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Health care costs are the top kitchen table issue facing most Americans. As people are morphing into health consumers, they seek Amazon-like experiences in health care. This book documents how Americans can become full health citizens through universal health care access, data privacy and personal control, investment in social determinants, digital tools, and health engagement.


Hype

Hype

Author: Nina Shapiro

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1250149312

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“[A] top doctor. . . . cuts through the clutter of confusion when it comes to the best advice for your health. . . . Every home should have a copy of Hype.” —Sanjay Gupta, MD, CNN Chief Medical Correspondent and New York Times–bestselling author There is a lot of misinformation thrown around these days, especially online. Headlines tell us to do this, not that—all in the name of living longer, better, thinner, younger. Dr. Shapiro wants to distinguish between the falsehoods and the evidence-backed truth. In her work at Harvard and UCLA, with more than twenty years of experience in both clinical and academic medicine, she helps patients make important health decisions every day. She’s bringing those lessons to life here with a blend of personal storytelling and science to discuss her dramatic new definition of “a healthy life.” Hype covers everything from exercise to supplements, alternative medicine to vaccines, and medical testing to media coverage. Shapiro tackles popular misconceptions such as toxic sugar and the importance of drinking eight glasses of water a day. She provides simple solutions anyone can implement, such as drinking 2% milk instead of fat free and using SPF 30 sunscreen instead of SPF 100. This book is as much for single individuals in the prime of their lives as it is for parents with young children and the elderly. Never has there been a greater need for this reassuring, and scientifically backed reality check. “[A] feisty, fact-filled diatribe. [Shapiro’s] skeptical, no-nonsense approach and probing assessment of fact versus fiction make for lively reading that is likely to help readers make better health and medical choices.” —Publishers Weekly