Bøger udgivet af Copernicus Healthcare

Today's national politics are highly polarized, with one of our two major political parties dysfunctional with internal conflicts and public confidence in government and the Supreme Court in decline. The electorate has become increasingly diverse, with a white supremacy movement inciting further division and hate crimes across the country while some on the right still believe Trump's Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.The democratic process has been damaged over many years by the growing power of corporate money in the election process. Supreme Court rulings have allowed unfettered amounts of political donations to politicians under the guise of 'free speech' so campaign money from billionaires now plays a major role in who gets elected. Trends over the last 40 plus years include rising income and wealth inequities, decline of the middle class, and growth of social media with spread of disinformation.This book offers a unique perspective on how oligarchy (power invested in a few or a dominant class) has enveloped our government and country; how oligarchs defend their power as it grows; how wealth influences elections in their favor; and how citizens, in addition to voting in the 2024 elections, can support steps to strengthen our democracy so that we can hold together as one country for the common good.

Thomas Paine made a strong case in his pamphlet, Common Sense, for people in the Thirteen Colonies to gain independence from England in 1775-1776. This pamphlet is also based on simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense. Now, 243 years later, the subject is different but parallel to his goal-to have the American people win their freedom from corporate interests in our medical-industrial complex that take exorbitant profits on the backs of sick individuals, their families, and taxpayers.

Profiteering, corruption and fraud are emblematic of our profit-driven, corporatized marketplace and so-called health care system. The three bleed into each other in an entangled way, and they are even increasing.ΓÇ¿We have to ask and answer: who is the health care system for- profits for health care corporations, their shareholders, and Wall Street traders and investors? for the corrupt and fraudulent scammers? or for patients, their families, and taxpayers? The urgent need for health care reform is at an all-time high as the U. S. struggles to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and the recession certain to follow. We are far behind other advanced nations with one or another system of universal coverage.ΓÇ¿Incremental attempts to reform U. S. health care have failed for many years. Our broken system is no longer affordable for patients, families, and taxpayers.This book updates where we are with the untenable status quo and compares three major alternatives for reform-building on the ACA, the public option, and Medicare for All.

The problems of U.S. health care are of intense public interest today. The debate over where to go next to rein in costs and improve access to quality health care has become bitterly partisan, with distorted rhetoric largely uninformed by history, evidence, or health policy science. Based on present trends, our expensive dysfunctional system threatens patients, families, the government, and taxpayers with future bankruptcy.This book takes a 60-year view of our health care system, from 1956 to 2016, from the perspective of a family physician who has lived through these years as a practitioner in two rural communities, a professor and administrator of family medicine in medical schools, a journal editor for 30 years, and a researcher and writer on health care for more than four decades.There has been a complete transformation of health care and medical practice over that time from physicians in solo or small group practice and community hospitals to an enormous, largely corporatized industry that has left behind many of the traditions of personalized health care. This is an objective, non-partisan look at the major trends changing U.S. health care over these years, and points out some of the highs-and lows-of these changes, which may surprise some readers. It also compares the three basic alternatives for health care reform currently being debated.

The Republican-controlled Congress has failed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or ObamaCare, over the last eight years, and there is widespread confusion and uncertainty as to what is going on in U. S. health care. Most Americans are increasingly anxious about whether they can afford their own health insurance and health care. Even those who are covered by Medicare and Medicaid are worried about threatened cutbacks to these programs as congressional Republicans commit themselves to slashing "entitlement" funding to help pay down the $1.5 trillion deficit resulting from passage of their 2017 tax bill. The ACA has been so undermined and sabotaged by the Trump administration that it is now owned by Trump and the GOP as TrumpCare. Chaos now reigns throughout our increasingly fragmented, dysfunctional, and unfair health care system. This book intends to make sense out of this chaos with four goals: (1) to describe what TrumpCare is; (2) to show how it will fail patients, families, taxpayers, and the nation; (3) to describe the growing crisis in health care in this country; and (4) to compare the only two real alternatives before us-continuance of TrumpCare or moving to single-payer Medicare for All. Recent national polls show that health care is the # 1 concern of the electorate, even above the economy, as the 2018 midterms approach. This book describes how Americans can gain universal access to affordable health care, with higher quality and less bureaucracy, paying less than we do now.

U. S. health care remains in crisis despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. The markers are serious-29 million still uninsured, 85 million underinsured, soaring costs of health care with no containment in sight, and growing numbers of people forgoing medical care and dying preventable deaths. After failing to repeal the ACA, the Trump administration and GOP have sabotaged it in many ways, such as by allowing insurers to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions. Private health insurers are ripping us off by administrative overhead and profits six or more times the overhead of not-for-profit public Medicare. Incremental approaches toward health care reform will fail. We need real Medicare for All with comprehensive benefits for all U. S. residents. We can afford it through savings of private insurer costs, negotiated drug prices, and progressive taxes whereby 95 percent of Americans will pay less than they do now for insurance and health care. This book charts the way to real reform based on Democratic control of the House and 70 percent of Americans supporting Medicare for All.