According to Himmelstein and Woolhandler, the authors of the original article introducing the program championed by Physicians’ for a National Health Program, this latest book from Geyman, emeritus professor of Family Medicine at the University of Washington, former president of PNHP, and prolific writer is “the best guide to the corporate driven corruption that has overtaken health care, and how the search for profit elbowed aside medical ethics…” Copernicus Healthcare, 2021

Abdul El-Sayed, MD, DPhil. Just a few years out of medical school, El-Sayed rebuilt Detroit’s Health Department after the City’s bankruptcy. He (and co-author Johnson) are known for using clear and simple terms to discuss complicated topics. In 3 sections–Overview, Policy, and Politics. Oxford Univ. Press, 2021

Potter describes in intimate detail how insurance companies manipulate public opinion in the service of shareholders, with deceptive studies and sympathetic media types calculated to mislead. He has been an outspoken commentator since the publication of this book in 2010. It’s still an instructive book.

Reid travels the world with a bum shoulder getting diagnoses and treatment plans (and timetables) in a dozen countries (France, England, Germany, Japan, India etc.) to get an apples-to-apples comparison of different health care systems from a patient’s perspective. An easy introduction to the topic. 2009.

A good choice especially for someone new to the topic. Argues persuasively against health care as a commodity. 140 pages. 2020

Subtitled “A Pandemic Story,” it’s really about this pandemic and how an unofficial team of scientists, public health experts, statisticians, and a policy wonk came together to do the work required to try to get ahead of the Covid contagion. Interesting story of how it started from a science-fair project of a 13-year-old shared with her father. 2021.

From Belk’s website:  “I thought [it] was an obvious question: …What do all the products of healthcare actually cost? …How much do they really cost?”  This is what he found:  “No one appears to know what anything costs–not the people buying (the patient), not the people selling (the doctors and hospitals).  …If no one knows what these costs are, how can this ‘market” be “free’?”

“Pharma, Greed, Lies, and the Poisoning of America,” by Gerald Posner, New York Times best-selling author and frequent TV commentator.  Simon & Schuster, 2020. A “who-done-it” tracing the rise of OxyContin, the narcotic painkiller at the center of the opioid crisis and the Sackler family’s dishonest role in creating the crisis. 

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