Mismanaged Care: How Corporate Medicine Jeopardizes Your Health

Drawing on over thirty years' experience in internal medicine, Dr. Michael E. Makover, a medical professor and practicing physician in internal medicine, speaks out for an ethical and caring tradition that has been endangered by current practices. In Mismanaged Care: How Corporate Medicine Jeopardizes Your Health, he explains the rationale for managed care, which was believed to be the solution to rising medical costs and alleged failures in American medical practice, and shows why managed care has not only failed to fulfill its promise, but has actually made things worse by stressing corporate profits over patients' needs and a cost-versus-quality mentality that focuses on the bottom line. Dr. Makover shows in detail how a good doctor provides quality medical care when free of outside interference and how, by contrast, managed care violates the doctor-patient relationship and fails to deliver on the quality it promises. Dr. Makover argues eloquently and authoritatively for a return to the professionalism that puts patients' needs first, and calls for the health care debate to be taken out of the hands of politicians, businesspeople, and lawyers and given back to patients and their physicians. He examines serious ethical issues we must all face, such as how best to allocate our health resources, how much to devote to prolonging life at its end, and how to make the most of the power of computers in medicine without sacrificing our privacy. Finally, he suggests a completely new way of financing medical care, one that will give patients complete control of their treatment; extend health care coverage to the 43 million Americans, including 10 million children, who are currently uninsured;and allow natural market forces to put an end to unnecessary increases in medical costs.