The Corporate Transformation of Health Care - John P. Geyman

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The Corporate Transformation of Health Care
Can the Public Interest Still Be Served?

Author: John P. Geyman, MD

Pub Date: 09/2004
328 pp Paperback
ISBN13: 9780826124661

List: $50.00

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Description | Table of Contents | Reviews | Sample Chapter | Author Biographies

Description

The author explores how the corporate transformation of hospitals, HMOs, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries has resulted in reduction in services, dangerous cost cutting, poor regulation, and corrupt research. He sheds light on the political lobbying and media manipulation that keeps the present system in place. Exposing the shortcomings of reform proposals that do little to alter the status quo, he makes a case for a workable single-payer system. This is an essential read for todays practitioners, policy makers, healthcare analysts and providers, and all those concerned with the precarious state of Americas under- and uninsured.

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Table of Contents

Part I: Corporate Contributions to the Soaring Costs of Health Care

Hospitals and Nursing Home Chains
Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs)
The Health Insurance Industry
The Pharmaceutical Industry
Medically Related Industries
Impacts of Corporate Practices on the Health Care System

Part II: How Health Care Corporations Defend and Promote Their Interests

Compromising the Integrity of Research
Disinformation and Media Control
Lobbying the Government
Co-Opting the Regulators

Part III: Is Reform Possible?

Privatization vs. the Public Utility Model of Health Care
Politics and Options for Health Care Reform
An Approach to Reform

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Reviews

"John Geyman has meticulously documented the magnitude and consequences of our headlong jump into corporate health care. As he vividly shows us, the results aren't pretty. In medicine, the profit motive proves better for shareholders and executives than for consumers, with enormous costs in both health and dollars. From the perspective of an extensive and distinguished background in medical care and medical education, Dr. Geyman offers a comprehensive and uncompromising look at a disturbing trend. For anyone who would like to see higher quality and more affordable healthcare, this book should be required reading."
--Richard Deyo MD, MPH, Health Services at the University of Washington & Director UW Center for Cost and the Outcomes Research

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Author Biographies

John P. Geyman, MD, is Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, where he served as department chairman for 14 years. As a board-certified family physician, he has spent 13 years in rural practice and over 25 years in academic medicine.

Dr. Geyman is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He was the founding editor of The Journal of Family Practice (1973-1990), and served as Editor of The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice from 1990 to 2003. He has authored four books of his own, The Modern Family Doctor and Changing Medical Practice (1971), Family Practice: Foundation of Changing Health Care (1985), Health Care in America: Can Our Ailing System Be Healed? (2002), and Falling Through the Safety Net: Americans Confront the Perils of Health Insurance (2004). He has co-edited five other books, including Behavioral Science in Family Practice (1980), Family Practice: An International Perspective in Developed Countries (1983) (translated into Japanese, 1985), Evidence-Based Clinical Practice: Concepts and Approaches (2000), and Textbook of Rural Medicine (2001). He has also authored or co-authored more than 175 articles and editorials in professional journals concerning various clinical subjects, primary care, medical education, and health policy.

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