A Pivotal Moment: Population, Justice, and the Environmental Challenge - Hardcover

Fixing America's health care-without jeopardizing its quality

Medical care in the United States has been loudly and repeatedly derided as inferior in comparison to health care systems in much of the developed world and even in some relatively undeveloped nations. In Excellent Health offers an alternative view of the much maligned state of health care in America, challenging the statistics often cited as evidence that medical care in the United States is substandard and poor in value relative to that of other countries. Rather than relying on purely subjective judgments about equity and fairness, it provides evidence to answer the paramount question when considering quality of health care, "Where would you rather be when you are sick?"

Drawing from research documented in scientific and medical journals, the author defends both the quality of and access to medical care in the United States compared to numerous countries with nationalized systems often held up as models for health system reforms. He then suggests a logical and complete reform plan designed to maintain choice and access to excellence and facilitate competition. His proposal offers a series of key improvements in the three critical areas of the health care puzzle-tax structure, private insurance markets, and government health insurance programs-that will reduce health costs and maintain essential support for America's most vulnerable citizens, seniors and low-income families.

Health care has become a topic of passionate debate in the United States. No one doubts that America's health care system needs change or that urgent reforms are required to ensure access and availability of the world's best medical care for the long term. But in an attempt to justify the radical reforms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of March 2010 and its premise that more government involvement is the solution to health care problems, its supporters have vilified private insurers and repeatedly criticized and unfavorably compared the quality of United States medical care to that in countries where government plays a far more prominent role in its availability and utilization. Research shows, however, that such comparisons are often misleading and contrary to factual data. This book exposes the facts about the state of America's health care system.

In Excellent Health revisits and analyzes the documents and statistics used to denigrate the quality of American health care and reaches far different conclusions. Author Scott Atlas presents the facts, as documented in scientific and medical journals, about the most important role of health care the diagnosis and treatment of serious diseases and shows how medical care quality in the United States compares favorably to that of other countries of the developed world. He also exposes the facts on access to medical care one of the most fundamental requirements of any health care system revealing that millions of people in other countries wait for appropriate diagnosis and treatment whereas Americans have superior access to timely medical care.

The author presents a plan for health care reform based on three key pillars: substantive tax reforms, including government-provided assistance for those in need; essential overhauls to private insurance; and a minimization of the government's role as direct insurer. With reforms that increase competition in the health insurance and health care markets, consumer-driven, value-based purchasing, rather than artificial government edicts, will lower costs to consumers.