This is one doctor who knows what he is talking about. Books are being sold on Amazon. com. Love to hear what you think!
Donna

SUMMARY OF BOOK
The basic health care system in the United States is not working and must be fixed. Today, the providers of care (physicians) have no motivation to control costs. The users of the service (patients) have little real choice in level of service, price, or quality. Those who pay for the service (the government and insurance companies) have minimal control over the utilization and price of services.
Forty-five million Americans have no health care coverage while millions more are under-insured due to high deductibles and co-payments or a lack of access to services. Yet what we are paying in health care costs, right now, is enough to provide health care coverage to all Americans if we eliminate waste and fraud through a well-designed health care delivery system that changes the motivation for providers and makes them fiscally responsible, while marginalizing the established fee-for-service system.
Robert Gumbiner, M.D., with more than forty years experience as a practicing physician and the founder of one of the largest managed care companies in the United States, lays out a startling, yet practical, plan for solving the health care crisis facing the United States. He clearly demonstrates that removing the middle man (insurance companies) will reduce health care costs by as much as fifty percent, allowing the United States to support a single-payer system that provides available, accessible and affordable coverage for everyone, including medical, dental, optometry, pharmaceuticals, hospitalization and preventive care. The cost of this comprehensive system – funded through a simple payroll deduction (employees) and contribution (employers) – would be instead of not in addition to what we now spend.
Key to this plan is the re-education and reorganization of health care providers. We need to restructure the medical education system, as well as the recruitment of health care providers, and eliminate the profit motive that currently drives health care delivery. This book offers practical and innovative suggestions: make providers responsible for cost and utilization through organized provider systems (supported by government reinsurance programs and management training); eliminate the fee-for-service mentality by putting doctors, like other professionals, on salary; give patients the option of choosing their organized provider system and/or paying for a second tier of more flexible coverage if so desired; open medical schools to everyone with the talent and desire to pursue a career in health care, regardless of income, which will result in a healthy supply of physicians throughout the country.
Drawing on his extensive experience in this country, as well as his years studying health care systems around the world, Robert Gumbiner debunks the myths held out by opponents to national universal health care. He shows, step-by-step, how we arrived at our current, dysfunctional system that leaves millions of people without adequate health care coverage. He argues, persuasively, that we have been misled by special interests into thinking a health care system funded through the government and managed for effective utilization will eliminate choice and never work. Rather, as demonstrated in this book, such a system – if well designed and managed – is the only practical solution to the health care crisis in the United States.