Health Care System

At its heart, polyvagal theory describes how the brain's unconscious sense of safety or danger impacts our emotions and behaviors. In this powerful book, pediatrician and neonatologist Marilyn R. Sanders and child psychiatrist George S. Thompson offer both a meditation on caregiving and a call to action. By attending to the lessons of polyvagal theory—that adult caregivers must be aware of children's unconscious processing of sensory information—the authors show how professionals can play a critical role in establishing a sense of safety even in the face of dangerous situations.

Uwe Reinhardt was a towering figure and moral conscience of health care policy in the United States and beyond. Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of today's US health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country, why this situation is morally indefensible, and how we might improve it.

Health-care organizations cry out for a tool to decrease untoward events and bridge the communication gap between professional clinician teams and clients. Discover how to guide your team to creatively problem-solve, build emotional and social intelligence, increase workplace safety and employee retention, and guarantee client satisfaction with the results-don’t-lie Improv to Improve Healthcare system.

Reveals the truth behind the controversial issue of vaccine-related injuries. Proponents declare that vaccines have saved millions of lives. Critics claim that the success is overstated and that vaccines may even be dangerous. Many consider mandatory vaccinations a violation of individual rights or religious principles. Many in public health argue that vaccine mandates are critical and justified and that antivaccination sentiment has resulted in outbreaks of preventable childhood illnesses.

Over the past three decades, the once-efficient American health care system has evolved into a complex maze of monopolies and a racket of bureaucratic checks, approvals, denials, roadblocks, and detours. This shift has created a massive and at times redundant workforce that frustrates patients, as well as physicians, nurses, and administrative staff. Health care costs the United States more than $11,000 for each person in the country each year - more than double what it costs in most Western European countries to deliver equal or even better care.

Navigating the complexities of the American healthcare system can be a daunting task for any medical professional, but it presents unique challenges for foreign medical graduates. "Guide to the American Healthcare System for the Foreign Medical Graduate" is an essential resource designed to demystify these challenges and provide a comprehensive roadmap to success.

America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare.

Many know from experience that the medical system can be difficult to navigate. Take it from Randy Pherson, who struggled with a medical condition for five years before getting a proper diagnosis - and once he did, had to undergo a major surgery to save his life. Because of his experience, Pherson decided to help others facing similar situations. Using his background of analytics from the CIA, Pherson offers his readers precise, analytical techniques for using the system to their advantage.

Every catastrophe has a beginning. For the opioid crisis in America, the seed was a drug called OxyContin. First hailed as a miracle drug for severe pain in the early 1990s, OxyContin went on to ignite a plague of addiction and death across America. Equal parts crime thriller, medical detective story and business exposé, Pain Killer is the origin story of the opioid crisis, a hard-hitting look at how a supposed wonder drug became the trigger for a national tragedy.

Living with a chronic, progressive neurological disease (MS), a geologist explores some of the confounding questions of our time. The difference between wellness and illness, the different, but complementary roles modern science and alternative traditions like naturopathy play in healing, the potholed approach to accessibility and affordability of health care in our great country, the role of resilience and opportunity in answering the time honored question each of us ask: "Just who am I?"

In Health Guardianship, surgeon-scientist Firouz Daneshgari provides an unflinching exploration into the systemic dysfunction caused (primarily) by America’s fee-for-service healthcare model. Procedures and surgeries generate revenue, healthy people don’t.

In Curable journalist and health care advocate Travis Christofferson looks at medicine through a magnifying glass and asks an important question: What if the roots of the current US health care crisis are psychological and systemic, perpetuated not just by corporate influence and the powers that be, but by you and me? Curable outlines the future of medicine, detailing brilliant examples of new health care systems that prove we can do better. It turns out we have more control over our health (and happiness) than we think.

Drafted at the conclusion of a series of trials of Nazi doctors who'd been charged of crimes - like murder and falsifying death certificates on behalf of their employer, the German government - the Nuremberg Code was the 20th century's first attempt to articulate specific ethical guidelines in an attempt to protect patients from systematic abuses by doctors, health care practitioners, and medical systems.

A courageous memoir that spans 40 years of Dinaaz Lentin's life experiences within our health care system. The story is raw, thought-provoking, and a brilliant look at complications and uncertainties when a medical challenge being faced is rare and uncertain. An extremely powerful example of how self-belief and trusting your own gut instinct can allow you to overcome any of life's challenges.

States of Health identifies the practical relevance of federalism to people facing ethical decisions about health and health care, and it considers the theoretical justifications for permissible differences among states. It asks whether authority over important aspects of health is misaligned in the United States today, with some matters problematically left to the states while others are taken over by the federal government.

Andy Lazris, MD, is a practicing primary care physician who experiences the effects of Medicare policy on a daily basis. As a result, he believes that the way we care for our elderly has taken a wrong turn and that Medicare is complicit in creating the very problems it seeks to solve. Aging is not a disease to be cured; it is a life stage to be lived. Lazris argues that aggressive treatments cannot change that fact but only get in the way and decrease quality of life.

For women, the possibility of experiencing medical gaslighting—having a health-care provider dismiss or ignore their concerns without considering appropriate testing or creating a treatment plan—has always been a very real and present danger. And being a woman of color, transgender, or disabled only compounds the risk. Today, more women are aware of medical gaslighting than ever—but awareness isn’t enough. In Medical Gaslighting, you’ll equip yourself with the tools you need to be fully heard at every step of the process.

Corridors of Contagion brings to light the experiences of five people incarcerated across the United States as they navigate the onset of the pandemic-and the many months, stretched into years, that followed. Journalist Victoria Law combines this storytelling with a trenchant analysis of the structural failures of the US carceral system: failures that made prisons uniquely vulnerable to COVID-19 outbreaks, from overcrowding to solitary confinement, from insufficient healthcare to life sentences.

What’s your max squat? How much ya bench? What’s your best deadlift? Can you press your body weight? Today, pushing quantifiable expressions of strength, like your maxes, is becoming increasingly ubiquitous. However, though strength may be specific, real strength is much more than a powerlifting total - it’s about resilience, capability, and adaptability. It’s survival of the fittest after all, not the strongest.

Today’s deliberations about a revamped health care system are stuck and in need of fresh analysis and a new vision. Health Care Revolt sets out to provide just that and at a most propitious time in US history. Dr. Michael Fine’s manifesto frames the questions more expansively than others before him and offers an impassioned road map for a nation confused about which healthcare direction to travel.