Nonfiction Book Award Status: SILVER
Synopsis
The rise of an enormous medical-industrial complex (MIC) over the last 60 years in the United States has brought wealth to ever-larger corporations, their shareholders, and CEOs at the expense of most Americans who struggle to gain access to affordable health care.
Despite its might on Wall Street, the MIC has left our country poorly prepared to meet the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, together with its resultant economic downturn. Add the third simultaneous challenge —systemic racism, made obvious by the inequities of disproportionate numbers of COVID-19 deaths among minorities.
America’s Mighty Medical-Industrial Complex describes how the status quo that puts profits ahead of care for patients and families is untenable. It describes three alternative approaches to health care reform an
d shows what a ‘new normal’ can and should look like based on evidence and values of equity and service instead of profiteering, corruption, and fraud.
This will be an ultimate battle royal between corporate America and Main Street that we can’t afford to lose.
Author Bio
John Geyman, M.D. is professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine from 1976 to 1990. As a family physician with over 21 years in academic medicine, he also practiced in rural communities for 13 years. He was the founding editor of The Journal of Family Practice (1973 to 1990) and the editor of The Journal of the American Board of Family Practice (1990 to 2003). Since 1997 he has been involved with research and writing on health policy and health care reform. He served as president of Physicians for a National Health Program from 2005 to 2007, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine.
He has published 20 books on health care since 1971, most in the last 20 years. His most recent books are America’s Mighty Medical-Industrial Complex: Negative Impacts and Positive Solutions (2021 in press), Profiteering, Corruption and Fraud in U. S. Health Care (2020), Long-Term Care in America: The Crisis All of Us Will Face in Our Lifetimes (2019), and TrumpCare: Lies, Broken Promises, How It Is Failing, and What Should Be Done? (2018).