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The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Health Care | 
| Author: David Gratzer
Publisher: Encounter Books
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  7 reviews
Sales Rank: 55284
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 250
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 159403219X
Dewey Decimal Number: 320
EAN: 9781594032196
ASIN: 159403219X
Publication Date: May 25, 2008
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Product Description
Drawing on personal experience in both the Canadian and U.S. systems, Dr. Gratzer shows how paternalistic government involvement in the health care system has multiplied inefficiencies, discouraged innovation, and punished patients. The Cure offers a detailed and practical approach to putting individuals back in charge. With an introduction by Milton Friedman, The Cure will be required reading for anyone who wants to know what is really wrong with the modern health care system.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...
 Ridiculous Bias! June 25, 2008
3 out of 17 found this review helpful
"The Cure" is possibly the most biased, useless book on American health care - omitting problems with conservative nostrums, and overstating issues with government involvement.
"The Cure" begins by relating stories of patients waiting for care in Canada's publicly financed health care system, pointing out that some die as a result. Far more frequently reported deaths in American E.R.s waiting for care are ignored. Gratzer belittles the uninsured problem - pointing out that most reported as such are in that category for only part of the year, while ignoring the fact that coverage breaks create long-term non-coverage of pre-existing conditions and liability for overwhelming medical bills.
Gratzer's prime argument is that restricting patient choices (HMOs; Medicare and Medicaid) brings higher costs - since HMO restrictions are primarily aimed at holding costs down, and most Medicare and Medicaid do not limit choice, I have no idea what this is based on. He then goes on to complain about Medicaid's basically eliminating deductibles - perhaps he'd rather wait until they show up in the E.D.? (A 6/26/08 WSJ article reported that 38% of uninsured delayed/did without care because of cost concerns; 17% of those with insurance did so also.)
Gratzer's ire is next directed at FDA delays in approving new drugs - ignoring the fact that the vast majority of "new" drugs now are "me-too" versions of existing drugs (eg. Vytorin - 20X as expensive as equivalent existing drugs), and a few even are deadly (eg. Baycol, Vioxx, Avandia, Thalidomide). Drug companies complain about billions required to bring new drugs to market, then forget to mention that most of these funds are supplied by government research grants, that much of their research is statistically invalid and/or misleading, and that Americans pay more than any other nation for prescription drugs.
Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs) are touted as an alternative to employer-provided health insurance - great if one has a 6-figure income, useless at near minimum wages. Gratzer also ignores the high administrative costs and selective enrollment/disenrollment machinations of insurers - especially those covering small businesses and individuals. Then there are the embarassing comparisons between costs of privately- and publicly-provided Medicare coverage and/or drugs.
Wennberg's practice-pattern variation is covered - way too briefly. Worse yet, Gratzer fails to point out that this presents an ideal opportunity for government intervention to reduce costs while improving quality. (CT angiograms are widely condemned as greatly overused to build revenue while having little medical value, at the same time subjecting patients to cancer-causing radiation 1,000X that of a regular x-ray.) Similarly, the 100,000+ deaths/year due to medical errors. (The latter have been shown to be best addressed through computer-assisted prescribing, steering patients to highest-volume providers ("practice makes perfect"), and intensivists in the ICU.)
The "good news" is that Gratzer correctly identifies the paucity of health care outcomes data as impeding objective consumer choice, then fails to recognize that this has best been addressed to-date by government actions (eg. N.Y. vs. CABG results) and that it is always strenuously opposed by health care providers with capitalist motives. On the other hand, those needing emergency care, especially out of their normal area, are not in any position to use such data - unless enforced somehow by government mandate.
Neither conservatives nor government interventionists (eg. today's New York Times reports that competitive bidding offers considerable savings in medical equipment) have all the answers. Gratzer should start over, using that as a premise.
 Because Everyone Seems to Need The Cure May 11, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The only moral and practical solution to the health care "crisis" in the United States is to allow the industry to become so profitable that productive geniuses such as Thomas Edison and Bill Gates will work long hours to deliver the best quality health care at affordable prices.
This book lucidly identifies how nearly every problem with the current health care system in the United States stems from too much regulation (although there are isolated cases of fraud.) From reading this book, you will learn, amongst other things:
* The serious error underlying using statistics on health to evaluate the quality of a health care system.
* How health insurance became employer based in the United States.
* The problem with various insurance mandates including: benefit mandates, guaranteed issue mandates, guaranteed renewability mandates and community rating mandates.
* How EMTALA, which prevents hospitals from denying patients emergency medical care, inevitably leads to less hospitals in the long run.
* The detrimental results of President Nixon's HMO Act of 1973.
In addition to identifying many problems, this book offers several market-based solutions. These include extensive calls for specific deregulations, removing price controls and pushing for more Health Savings Accounts. The author also spends a considerable amount of time comparing the U.S.' current health care system to those of various other countries, including but not limited to Canada, Great Britain, Germany, South Africa, Australia and Sweden.
If you appreciate laissez-faire economics and you are concerned about health care in the United States, then this is the book for you!
John B. Sullivan, Jr., MD February 3, 2008
3 out of 28 found this review helpful
The whole premise of this book is a fallacy. Health care is not a market driven phenonmenon. Capitalism as the author refers to is basically those with lots of money get quality health care, those without lots of money get something of much lesser quality. He ignores trauma as a major cost of health care and the fact is trauma victims don't usually make the choice to be traumatized. Also, 50% of trauma victims have alcohol in their system and he makes no effort to bring back prohibition as a cost saving feature of health care. The reason health care costs go up instead of down is due to illness, age, lack of preventive health, and good old American freedom to eat at any McDonald's you wish and smoke as much as you like. A person having a heart attack will not stop to consider how to best spend his limited health care dollars in our market economy. He wants help now. He wants the latest and best drugs, an excellent cath lab and great cardiologists whose hospital has the lowest mortality. If the man has no money or no insurance, he could have a bill of $100,000 in two or three days that is the equivalent of another home mortgage. But this is capitalism, so his wages will be garnered and his home sold to pay the bills. He should have gone to the cheaper hospital, wherever that is and also should have taken the cheaper ambulance Maybe he should have walked to save money for the $1.2 trillion health care system and demonstrated that he too is a good capitalist like the author of the book. Save your money and read Health Affairs, its a reliable, peer-reviewed publication on health care policy and financing.
The perfect antidote to Moore's Sicko propaganda September 17, 2007
16 out of 22 found this review helpful
Let me state now that NO ONE is denying that healthcare in the United States is messed up right now, and is facing some SERIOUS issues. Even the most conservative Republican knows this full well and good. This is not even the issue. The real issue should be: would socializing things make our problems better or worse?
Michael Moore, in Sicko, touts Canada's socialized healthcare system, even calling it "free." (It's not free. The government also does not "pay" for it because the government does NOT have any money. Taxpayers pay for it.) Moore is of course conveniently ignoring many well-known facts. The author of Cure was a Doctor in Canada, and saw first-hand the problem with socialized medicine. His book demonstrates that it's not all that it's cracked up to be. Sorry Hillary.
In England and Canada, if you go to the doctor or the hospital, you won't get a bill. Yeah that's great. But the problem that has emerged is that it takes SO LONG to even get in for certain types of treatment that people are DYING OF EASILY TREATABLE ILLNESSES THERE. In England this has gotten SO BAD that more people are dying a year of treatable cancer than from automobile accidents!!! Yes, that's right. The cancer WAS treatable, but by the time they actually get in for treatment, it has advanced to the stage that it no longer is treatable, and the patient dies.
So, if the healthcare in Canada is SO WONDERFUL, then why are so many Canadians flooding our Northern hospitals every year? They come across the border for an appointment they can get right away, when in their own country they would have to wait nine months to a year for treatment. As shown on 20/20, dogs and cats that need surgery in Canada get it faster than humans!
By the way, if you get strep throat and have to wait a month to even get in to see a general practitioner (which is about the typical wait for GPs in Canada), then what's even the point? You'll be better by the time you get in! So, depending on whether what you have is life-threatening or not, YOU'LL MAY EITHER BE BETTER OR UNCURABLE BY THE TIME YOU EVEN SEE A DOCTOR! Who cares if it's "free"? As the Canadian woman on the September 14th episode of 20/20 said who had to come to America for a life-saving surgery that the Canadian system classified as "elective surgery" (whereas the American doctor gave her only a couple weeks to live), "Who cares if they make a profit (in America), I'm alive!"
The wait to see dentists in England is so bad that people are now performing home dentistry. We're not talking teeth cleaning here, but people pulling their own teeth out instead of having professional work done! Lines to get into the dentist in England look like the lines did at the local theater on the opening night of Star Wars Episode III. No thank you!
By the way, if the government-run medical system in Canada is so great, then why does a private clinic now open in Canada EVERY WEEK, on average, even though such clinics ARE ILLEGAL? Furthermore, if these private clinics are illegal in Canada (and they are), then why does the Canadian government do nothing to stop them? BECAUSE THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT KNOWS IT NEEDS THEM, THAT ITS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IS CRUMBLING, THAT'S WHY. The prime minister of Canada recently suggested that their socialized healthcare system is on the brink of collapse, and Americans are scurrying to emulate it!
This book is a much-needed reality check after the overlong season of uncritical love surrounding Moore's obscurantist propaganda documentary. In fact, it's too bad this book isn't a documentary itself; it could then act as a more effective counterweight.
Evidence versus anecdotes August 9, 2007
9 out of 13 found this review helpful
David Gratzer, being a licensed physician in Canada and the US, is a credible critic of proponents of socialized medicine. He does an excellent job of providing data to support his points, and most of his points are that people supporting the concept of a single payer for health care use anecdotes rather than convincing data to show how the US health system is failing. He uses hard endpoint data, such as diagnosis of breast cancer in early stages, cancer survival data, and survival after heart attacks, to show that health care in the US leads other countries in the world and espcially those with single payer systems run by the government. He makes the point that being "politically correct" doesn't necessarily make one "scientifically correct". The way he criticizes the mind-set of socialized medicine reminded me of the methods used by Thomas Sowell in his 1995 book, "The Vision of the Anointed". He pointed out that most of the "policially correct" set ignore factual evidence. Gratzer finds these arguments and provides the evidence that is often ignored. This should be a must read for those in positions to influence the debate.
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