The Corporate Transformation of Health Care : Can the Public Interest Still Be Served?

The author explores how the corporate transformation of hospitals, HMOs, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries has resulted in reduction in services, dangerous cost cutting, poor regulation, and corrupt research. He sheds light on the political lobbying and media manipulation that keeps the present system in place. Exposing the shortcomings of reform proposals that do little to alter the status quo, he makes a case for a workable single-payer system. This is an essential read for today's practitioners, policy makers, healthcare analysts and providers, and all those concerned with the precarious state of America's under- and uninsured. COVER PAGE About the Author Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Contents List of Tables and Figures Preface Acknowledgments Chapter 1: Growth of Investor-Owned Corporate Health Care PART I: Corporate Contributions to the Soaring Costs of Health Care Chapter 2: Hospitals and Nursing Home Chains Chapter 3: Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) Chapter 4: The Health Insurance Industry Chapter 5: The Pharmaceutical Industry Chapter 6: Medically Related Industries Chapter 7: Impact of Corporate Practices on the Health Care System PART II: How Health Care Corporations Defend and Promote Their Interests Chapter 8: Compromising the Integrity of Research Chapter 9: Disinformation and Media Control Chapter 10: Lobbying the Government Chapter 11: Co-opting the Regulators PART III: Is Reform Possible? Chapter 12: Privatization vs The Public Utility Model of Health Care Chapter 13: Politics and Options for Health Care Reform Chapter 14: An Approach to Reform APPENDIX 1: The "United States National Health Insurance Act," H.R. 676 APPENDIX 2: Potential Administrative Savings by State, 2003, Achievable with a Single-Payer National Health Insurance Program INDEX Geyman (emeritus, family medicine, U. of Washington) spent 13 years in rural practice before turning to academia. Over 30 years he watched control of the US health-care system shift from medical professionals and not-for-profit interests to a relatively small number of large health-care corporations, to the detriment, he believes, of the public interest. His analysis of the extent of the corporate transformation looks at its impacts on costs and on access to health care. He also considers options for reform given current political and economic realities. The intended audience is physicians and other health professionals, policy makers, legislators, business and labor groups, and citizen reform groups as well as consumers The author explores how the corporate transformation of hospitals, HMOs, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries has resulted in reduction in services, dangerous cost cutting, poor regulation, and corrupt research. He sheds light on the political lobbying and media manipulation that keeps the present system in place. Exposing the shortcomings of reform proposals that do little to alter the status quo, he makes a case for a workable single-payer system. This is an essential read for todayís practitioners, policy makers, healthcare analysts and providers, and all those concerned with the precarious state of Americaís under- and uninsured. Explores how the corporate transformation of hospitals, HMOs, and the insurance and pharmaceutical industries has resulted in reduction in services, dangerous cost cutting, poor regulation, and corrupt research. This book is useful for policy makers, healthcare analysts, and providers. As we know only too well, the mere mention of Enron has come to symbolize all the worst of investor-owned corporations in this country.