A Luxury Called Health a Doctor's Journey Through the Art, the Science and the Trickery of Medicine

A Luxury Called Health a Doctor's Journey Through the Art, the Science and the Trickery of Medicine PDF Author: Kavery Nambisan
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
ISBN: 9789354470714
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

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Book Description
Description The miracles and tragedies of life, the compassion and cruelties of humanity are nowhere more visible than in the field of medicine. It is these that Kavery Nambisan-doctor and writer of immense sensitivity-explores in this memoir, drawing upon her work as a surgeon over four decades in rural and small-town India. Through her patients' stories, she depicts the highs and lows of medical practice: Sudha, in Mokama, Bihar, left immobilized waist-down after being set on fire by her in-laws, but determined to walk; construction workers in Lonavala, Maharashtra, who preferred the quick-fix of the 'drip', so that they wouldn't miss their daily wage; four-year-old Pavana in the Anamallais, mauled by a leopard, who had to be driven over 40 kilometres of gutted roads to the nearest hospital. And in contrast, the friend of a Tamil Nadu chief minister who could summon a doctor repeatedly, at will, to attend to her stubbed toe. Settled in Kodagu, Karnataka, after years of practice in hospitals, Kavery now works as a GP, and she writes about treating snake bites, skin diseases, tuberculosis, epileptic seizures and, lately, Covid-19; even as she helps some of her patients hide their meagre savings from alcoholic husbands. Throughout, Kavery also examines the evolution of medical practice and the state of India's public health; and weaves in episodes from her personal life: learning from heroes and rogues, coming into her own as a surgeon, and nursing her husband, the poet Vijay Nambisan, who was claimed by cancer. Engaging, incisive and deeply felt, A Luxury Called Health shows, as few books have ever done, 'the sincerity and the deception, the valour and the cowardice beneath the white coat'.

A Luxury Called Health a Doctor's Journey Through the Art, the Science and the Trickery of Medicine

A Luxury Called Health a Doctor's Journey Through the Art, the Science and the Trickery of Medicine PDF Author: Kavery Nambisan
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
ISBN: 9789354470714
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 320

Get Book Here

Book Description
Description The miracles and tragedies of life, the compassion and cruelties of humanity are nowhere more visible than in the field of medicine. It is these that Kavery Nambisan-doctor and writer of immense sensitivity-explores in this memoir, drawing upon her work as a surgeon over four decades in rural and small-town India. Through her patients' stories, she depicts the highs and lows of medical practice: Sudha, in Mokama, Bihar, left immobilized waist-down after being set on fire by her in-laws, but determined to walk; construction workers in Lonavala, Maharashtra, who preferred the quick-fix of the 'drip', so that they wouldn't miss their daily wage; four-year-old Pavana in the Anamallais, mauled by a leopard, who had to be driven over 40 kilometres of gutted roads to the nearest hospital. And in contrast, the friend of a Tamil Nadu chief minister who could summon a doctor repeatedly, at will, to attend to her stubbed toe. Settled in Kodagu, Karnataka, after years of practice in hospitals, Kavery now works as a GP, and she writes about treating snake bites, skin diseases, tuberculosis, epileptic seizures and, lately, Covid-19; even as she helps some of her patients hide their meagre savings from alcoholic husbands. Throughout, Kavery also examines the evolution of medical practice and the state of India's public health; and weaves in episodes from her personal life: learning from heroes and rogues, coming into her own as a surgeon, and nursing her husband, the poet Vijay Nambisan, who was claimed by cancer. Engaging, incisive and deeply felt, A Luxury Called Health shows, as few books have ever done, 'the sincerity and the deception, the valour and the cowardice beneath the white coat'.

Catastrophic Care

Catastrophic Care PDF Author: David Goldhill
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307961559
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
A visionary investigation that will change the way we think about health care: how and why it is failing, why expanding coverage will actually make things worse, and how our health care can be transformed into a transparent, affordable, successful system. In 2007, David Goldhill’s father died from infections acquired in a hospital, one of more than two hundred thousand avoidable deaths per year caused by medical error. The bill was enormous—and Medicare paid it. These circumstances left Goldhill angry and determined to understand how world-class technology and personnel could coexist with such carelessness—and how a business that failed so miserably could be paid in full. Catastrophic Care is the eye-opening result. Blending personal anecdotes and extensive research, Goldhill presents us with cogent, biting analysis that challenges the basic preconceptions that have shaped our thinking for decades. Contrasting the Island of health care with the Mainland of our economy, he demonstrates that high costs, excess medicine, terrible service, and medical error are the inevitable consequences of our insurance-based system. He explains why policy efforts to fix these problems have invariably produced perverse results, and how the new Affordable Care Act is more likely to deepen than to solve these issues. Goldhill steps outside the incremental and wonkish debates to question the conventional wisdom blinding us to more fundamental issues. He proposes a comprehensive new way, where the customer (the patient) is first—a system focused on health and maintaining it, a system strong and vibrant enough for our future. If you think health care is interesting only to institutes and politicians, think again: Catastrophic Care is surprising, engaging, and brimming with insights born of questions nobody has thought to ask. Above all it is a book of new ideas that can transform the way we understand a subject we often take for granted.

The Price We Pay

The Price We Pay PDF Author: Marty Makary
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1635574129
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
New York Times bestseller Business Book of the Year--Association of Business Journalists From the New York Times bestselling author comes an eye-opening, urgent look at America's broken health care system--and the people who are saving it--now with a new Afterword by the author. "A must-read for every American." --Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, FORBES One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of the business of medicine and its elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable. The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

Remedy and Reaction

Remedy and Reaction PDF Author: Paul Starr
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300206666
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
In no other country has health care served as such a volatile flashpoint of ideological conflict. America has endured a century of rancorous debate on health insurance, and despite the passage of legislation in 2010, the battle is not yet over. This book is a history of how and why the United States became so stubbornly different in health care, presented by an expert with unsurpassed knowledge of the issues. Tracing health-care reform from its beginnings to its current uncertain prospects, Paul Starr argues that the United States ensnared itself in a trap through policies that satisfied enough of the public and so enriched the health-care industry as to make the system difficult to change. He reveals the inside story of the rise and fall of the Clinton health plan in the early 1990sùand of the Gingrich counterrevolution that followed. And he explains the curious tale of how Mitt RomneyÆs reforms in Massachusetts became a model for Democrats and then follows both the passage of those reforms under Obama and the explosive reaction they elicited from conservatives. Writing concisely and with an even hand, the author offers exactly what is needed as the debate continuesùa penetrating account of how health care became such treacherous terrain in American politics.

Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care?

Which Country Has the World's Best Health Care? PDF Author: Ezekiel J. Emanuel
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1541797728
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 464

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Book Description
The preeminent doctor and bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel is repeatedly asked one question: Which country has the best healthcare? He set off to find an answer. The US spends more than any other nation, nearly $4 trillion, on healthcare. Yet, for all that expense, the US is not ranked #1 -- not even close. In Which Country Has the World's Best Healthcare? Ezekiel Emanuel profiles eleven of the world's healthcare systems in pursuit of the best or at least where excellence can be found. Using a unique comparative structure, the book allows healthcare professionals, patients, and policymakers alike to know which systems perform well, and why, and which face endemic problems. From Taiwan to Germany, Australia to Switzerland, the most inventive healthcare providers tackle a global set of challenges -- in pursuit of the best healthcare in the world.

One Health

One Health PDF Author: Ronald M. Atlas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1555818439
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Emerging infectious diseases are often due to environmental disruption, which exposes microbes to a different niche that selects for new virulence traits and facilitates transmission between animals and humans. Thus, health of humans also depends upon health of animals and the environment – a concept called One Health. This book presents core concepts, compelling evidence, successful applications, and remaining challenges of One Health approaches to thwarting the threat of emerging infectious disease. Written by scientists working in the field, this book will provide a series of "stories" about how disruption of the environment and transmission from animal hosts is responsible for emerging human and animal diseases. Explains the concept of One Health and the history of the One Health paradigm shift. Traces the emergence of devastating new diseases in both animals and humans. Presents case histories of notable, new zoonoses, including West Nile virus, hantavirus, Lyme disease, SARS, and salmonella. Links several epidemic zoonoses with the environmental factors that promote them. Offers insight into the mechanisms of microbial evolution toward pathogenicity. Discusses the many causes behind the emergence of antibiotic resistance. Presents new technologies and approaches for public health disease surveillance. Offers political and bureaucratic strategies for promoting the global acceptance of One Health.

Priceless

Priceless PDF Author: John C. Goodman
Publisher: Independent Institute
ISBN: 1598133977
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
In this long-awaited updated edition of his groundbreaking work Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, renowned healthcare economist John Goodman ("father" of Health Savings Accounts) analyzes America's ongoing healthcare fiasco—including, for this edition, the failed promises of Obamacare. Goodman then provides what many critics of our healthcare system neglect: solutions. And not a moment too soon. Americans are entangled in a system with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. It's not just patients that need liberation from this labyrinth of confusion—it's doctors, businessmen, and institutions as well. Read this new work and discover: why no one sees a real price for anything: no patient, no doctor, no employer, no employee; how Obamacare's perverse incentives cause insurance companies to seek to attract the healthy and avoid the sick; why having a preexisting condition is actually WORSE under Obamacare than it was before—despite rosy political promises to the contrary; why emergency-room traffic and long waits for care have actually increased under Obamacare; how Medicaid expansion spends new money insuring healthy, single adults, while doing nothing for the developmentally disabled who languish on waiting lists and children who aren't getting the pediatric care they need; how the market for medical care COULD be as efficient and consumer-friendly as the market for cell phone repair... and what it would take to make that happen; how to create centers of medical excellence, which compete to meet the needs of the chronically ill; and much, much more... Thoroughly researched, clearly written, and decidedly humane in its concern for the health of all Americans, John Goodman has written the healthcare book to read to understand today's healthcare crisis. His proposed solutions are bold, crucial, and most importantly, caring. Healthcare is complex. But this book isn't. It's clear, it's satisfying, and it's refreshingly human. If you read even one book about healthcare policy in America, this is the one to read.

An American Sickness

An American Sickness PDF Author: Elisabeth Rosenthal
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698407180
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 434

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Book Description
A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

Mistreated

Mistreated PDF Author: Robert Pearl
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610397665
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
The biggest problem in American health care is us Do you know how to tell good health care from bad health care? Guess again. As patients, we wrongly assume the "best" care is dependent mainly on the newest medications, the most complex treatments, and the smartest doctors. But Americans look for health-care solutions in the wrong places. For example, hundreds of thousands of lives could be saved each year if doctors reduced common errors and maximized preventive medicine. For Dr. Robert Pearl, these kinds of mistakes are a matter of professional importance, but also personal significance: he lost his own father due in part to poor communication and treatment planning by doctors. And consumers make costly mistakes too: we demand modern information technology from our banks, airlines, and retailers, but we passively accept last century's technology in our health care. Solving the challenges of health care starts with understanding these problems. Mistreated explains why subconscious misperceptions are so common in medicine, and shows how modifying the structure, technology, financing, and leadership of American health care could radically improve quality outcomes. This important book proves we can overcome our fears and faulty assumptions, and provides a roadmap for a better, healthier future.

God's Way to Ultimate Health

God's Way to Ultimate Health PDF Author: George H. Malkmus
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780929619026
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Malkmus and Dye base natural healing on the premise that a diet rich in raw fruits and vegetables, and the elimination of processed "dead" foods, will result in the ultimate health.