By John Geyman, M.D.
Copernicus Healthcare
From the Preface
There are four key issues involved in the future of U.S. health care:
- Who is the health care system for – profiteering corporate stakeholders, their shareholders and Wall Street investors – or patients, families, and taxpayers?
- Is health care just another commodity for sale in our largely for-profit market-based system – or essential services based on medical necessity?
- Is health care a human right or a privilege based on ability to pay?
- What ethic should prevail in health care – a business “ethic” maximizing revenue to providers or a service ethic based on needs of patients and their families?
This book has four goals:
- To identify and define issues concerning health care reform across the political spectrum in the upcoming 2020 election cycle;
- To expose disinformation and demagoguery for what it is;
- To focus on the real stakes for the American people regardless of political ideology; and
- To help educate policy makers, legislators, and the electorate concerning the real issues and likely outcomes of alternative approaches to health care reform.
Common Sense: The Case For and Against Medicare For All
By John Geyman, M.D.
This Common Sense pamphlet, written in the style of Thomas Paine, “offer(s) simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense about the current crisis in health care in this country and urgent need for reform.”
“This pamphlet is targeted to legislators in Congress who will be involved in this new debate over health care, grassroots activists, and the general public seeking to better understand the issues.”
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
A bizarre twist of American exceptionalism is that we have by far the most expensive health care system in the world, and yet it is one of the poorest performing of well financed systems. Particularly egregious are the poor health outcomes of not only many of those who remain uninsured but also the tens of millions who are insured but their coverage fails them in time of medical need. John Geyman explains what is wrong, what the political failures are that led to this fiasco, and most importantly, what we can do to finally bring us a high performance system that is affordable and accessible for each and everyone of us.
(The mission of PNHP is to educate physicians, other health workers, and the general public on the need for a comprehensive, high-quality, publicly-funded health care program, equitably accessible to all residents of the United States. PNHP does not endorse any political party or candidate, but we recommend that all politicians, regardless of political affiliation, support the goal of our mission.)
Stay informed! Visit www.pnhp.org/qotd to sign up for daily email updates.