Books about Health, Health
Care, and Health Care Economics
The Bookworm's rating system
The Bookworm rates books from 1 to 10 as in the table below:
| 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
| total garbage |
really, really, bad |
real bad |
bad |
below
average |
above
average |
good |
really good |
really, really, good |
a masterpiece! |
Books rated 9 or 10 are books that you can't put down. Books ranked
7 or 8, while they can be walked away from, have some redeeming quality
that makes them worthwhile. The Bookworm suggests that you avoid
books that rate from 1 to 6.
Patient
Power: The Free-Enterprise Alternate to Clinton's Health Plan
[ABRIDGED] by John C. Goodman, Gerald L. Musgrave
This is the best book ever written on the topic
of how to improve health care in America. It's written by two brilliant
economists in a wonderfully compelling style for the lay person.
It shows how a whole family of people, all with different self-interests,
benefit from a health care system in which the patient is the most powerful
person instead of some uncaring third party. Unless you are an ecomomist
or an economics student, read this abridged version, which is short and
sweet.
This
Won't Hurt (And Other Lies My Doctor Tells Me): Observations from the Other
End of the Stethoscope by Charles B. Inlander
This book is written by Charles B. Inlander, who
is President of the People's Medical Society, which is the largest nonprofit
consumer medical group in the world. This is a great book about how
to grab some of the power that belongs to you as a health care consumer.
I'm not sure that Mr. Inlander has the ultimate solution to the problem
figured out, but it's a very easy to read book.