From the Preface
Chaos reigns throughout our increasingly fragmented and dysfunctional health care system. Corporate mergers and profits are the order of the day, with the business “ethic” to make more money trumping the traditional service ethic of care. Health care is becoming less and less affordable or accessible, while Americans continue to lose free choice of physician, other providers, and hospitals. Family budgets are already strained to the limits as many patients forgo necessary care, have worse outcomes if and when they finally get care, and often have to choose between food and medications.
Health care is a leading issue in the forthcoming 2018 midterm elections, and promises to be in the 2020 election cycle. This book undertakes four goals: (1) to describe what our increasingly dysfunctional health care system looks like after the ACA has been gutted by GOP sabotage; (2) to show how TrumpCare will fail patients, families, tax payers, and the nation; (3) to describe the increasing crisis in U.S. health care; and (4) to outline the only two future scenarios that could deal with this worsening situation, only one of which will work.
It is my hope that this book will help voters to better understand their options during the coming election cycles, as well as help candidates hoping to be elected to positions where that can make a difference.
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Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
Our overpriced but underperforming health care system is being made worse under Trump policies. It is extremely urgent that we change direction. John Geyman explains what has gone wrong and what we can do about it so that absolutely everyone finally can have affordable, high quality health care.
By exercising their right to vote, people can change the national agenda. This book is designed to enable voters to make an informed choice in the current midterm election. More importantly, it will inform voters on sound policies that they can take to their respective parties to encourage incorporation into their party platforms for the next presidential election. A clear majority of Democrats and close to half of Republicans are already there. If both major parties were to include an improved Medicare for all in their platforms, then the next presidential election could actually provide a very real prospect of affordable health care for everyone.
Many have said that there are three scenarios for reform: Obamacare, TrumpCare, and single payer Medicare for all. Actually, as Geyman explains, there are only two since both Obamacare and TrumpCare are merely a perpetuation of our current, fragmented, dysfunctional method of financing health care with mere tweaks based on the ideology of the person holding office. Since Donald Trump is currently the president, the two nominal choices we have are TrumpCare and single payer Medicare for all. Geyman’s book explains why the latter is the only real choice if we want affordable, high quality care for everyone.
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