The American Way of Health: How Medicine Is Changing and What It Means to You - Hardcover

Time associate editor Castro was the magazine's first health-policy reporter, authoring its 1991 "Condition Critical" cover story on the health-care crisis. The strengths of Castro's effort are her lucid, readable writing style and her insistence on the complexity of what is wrong with U.S. health care now and what is needed to make it better (i.e., to expand coverage, improve quality, and control costs). On the negative side, Castro exaggerates in some areas (alleging, for example, that hospital discharge planning didn't exist until "just a few years ago"), and the book as a whole--and particularly her summaries of competing reform legislation and of the pros and cons of other countries' health-care approaches--leaves little doubt that she prefers the market-dependent Jackson Hole version of managed competition. Still, for millions of citizens who rely on the current clumsy system and will depend on whatever modified arrangement may be enacted for the quality of their lives and health, Castro's work is one of the clearest explanations available of just what is at stake. Mary Carroll

The national dialog over healthcare reform is arguably the most vital issue confronting us. With this book, Time reporter Castro provides a national service by helping readers understand what is at stake in the health debate. Castro explains "how the American health system works, why it costs so much, and why we are suddenly embroiled in an argument over how to make profound changes in everyone's private medical arrangements." The social, economic, political, ethical, and professional (that is, the human) issues and facts of the healthcare debate are all included in this highly commendable study. This book is required reading that could serve as a national health reform primer. Thank you, Ms. Castro.
James Swanton, Albert Einstein Coll. of Medicine, New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.