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You are here > Home > Reading Lists > Politics, Policy & Reform > Critical Condition

Critical Condition: How Health Care in America Became Big Business - and Bad Medicine
Donald Barlett, James Steele

Softcover: 288 pages
ISBN 0767910753
Doubleday / Broadway
October 2005
(click button below for the very best
currently available price for this important resource)

 

Exposing the most controversial, little-known practices of America’s most flawed system, Time magazine’s Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative team pulls back the curtain on the health care industry to explain exactly how things grew so out of control. This may sound like the predicament of a third-world nation, but this is America’s health care reality today:

  • Dirty examination and operating rooms in doctor’s offices and hospitals
  • Health care executives pulling in millions in bonuses for denying treatment to the sick
  • More than 100 million people with inadequate or no medical coverage

By analyzing the industry and offering an insightful prescription for getting it back on the right track, Critical Condition is an enormously compelling investigative work that addresses the concerns of every American. The U.S. spends more on health care than any other nation, yet our benefits are shrinking and life expectancy is shorter here than in countries that spend significantly less per capita. Meanwhile, HMOs, pharmaceutical companies, and hospital chains reap tremendous profits, while politicians—beholden to insurers and drug companies—enact legislation for the benefit of the few rather than the many, while the entire system is on the verge of collapse.

In Critical Condition, award-winning investigative journalists Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele expose the horror of what health care in America has become. They profile patients and doctors trapped by the system and offer startling personal stories that illuminate what’s gone wrong. Doctors tell of being second-guessed and undermined by health care insurers; nurses recount chilling tales of hospital meltdowns; patients explain how they’ve been victimized by a system that is meant to care for them. Drug companies profit by selling pills in the same manner that Madison Avenue sells soap, while Wall Street rakes in billions by building up and then tearing down health care businesses. And politicians pass legislation perpetuating the injustices and out-right fraud the system encourages.

“They are almost certainly the best team in the history of investigative reporting.” —Washington Journalism Review

“Once or twice in a generation, the American people are jolted by a book that helps bring about major change. America: What Went Wrong. . . is a monumental achievement. . . ” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Barlett and Steele have incisively and vividly defined the problem facing the nation. . . ” —The New York Times

“Instead of just reporting still unproven accusations and focusing on individual corruption, [they reveal] with expert analysis and thorough documentation what has systematically gone wrong with the powerful, complex institutions that affect so much of life today.” —Leonard Downie, Jr., author of The New Muckrakers: An Inside Look at America’s Investigative Reporters

If you are interested in policy or books about health care reform, please see our up-to-date collection here: Politics, Policy & Reform.

(information from the publisher)

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