The Citizen Patient

Conflicts of interest, misrepresentation of clinical trials,hospital price-fixing, and massive expenditures for procedures of dubiousefficacy--these and other critical flaws leave little doubt that the current UShealth-care system is in need of an overhaul. In this essential guide,preeminent physician Nortin Hadler urges American health-care consumers to taketime to understand the existing system and to visualize what the outcome ofsuccessful reform might look like. Central to this vision is a sharedunderstanding of the primacy of the relationship between doctor and patient.Hadler shows us that a new approach is necessary if we hope to improve thehealth of the populace. Rational health care, he argues, is far less expensivethan the irrationality of the status quo.

Taking a critical view of how medical treatment,health care finance, and attitudes about health, medicine, and disease play outin broad social and political settings, Hadler applies his wealth of experienceand insight to these pressing issues, answering important questions for citizen-patients and policy makers alike.