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Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America | 
| Author: Ezekiel J. Emanuel
Creator: Victor Fuchs
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $8.52
You Save: $6.43 (43%)
New (33) Used (9) from $8.52
Avg. Customer Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 7723
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.7
ISBN: 1586486624
Dewey Decimal Number: 362.104250973
EAN: 9781586486624
ASIN: 1586486624
Publication Date: May 26, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
DIVAmerica spends more than any other developed nation on healthcare#8212;$2.1 trillion in 2007 alone. But 47 million Americans remain uninsured, and of those Americans who are insured, many suffer from poor health. In his ground-breaking proposal, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel offers up a plan to comprehensively restructure the delivery and quality of our healthcare. By eliminating employer-healthcare and establishing an independent program to evaluate healthcare plans and insurance companies, he offers a no-nonsense guide to how government can institute private insurance options that will allow each of us a choice of doctor and plan. PWith the rate of healthcare costs rapidly outpacing our gross domestic product, we can no longer afford to maintain our fragmented delivery of care, or entertain reforms that seek to patch, rather than cure, a fractured system. Accessible, straightforward, and revolutionary in its approach, IHealthcare, Guaranteed/I is an inarguable guide to lasting healthcare reform./DIV
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| Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
 medicare advantage on steroids January 1, 2009
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
Dr Emanuel does a superficial job of describing the waste in the health care system. He neglects to discuss the maldistribution of physicians. A culture which demands innefective treatment for hopelessly ill patients, quackery, and overegulation by state and federal regulatory agencies. His solution is to provide a voucher from the government, to obtain private health insurance. Medicare advantage does this at a cost of 15% above federal medicare. Dr Emanuel leaves physicains and patients negotiating a provider network. Patients are at risk of getting in the clutches of a nonparticipating provider. We are still paying for the insurance companies' agency department, to tell us we need heatlh insurance. Still paying for an underwriting department to calculate risk that has to be assumed. Still paying insurance executives multimillion dollar salaries, flying them in corporate jets, paying dividends to stockholders and doing mergers and acquisitions. The tort reform proposed by Dr Emanuel which does not impose an administrative remedy and allows patients to sue if they are unhappy with the determination has been tried in New Jersey and failed. He offers no solution for class action lawsuits. Between phen phen and prempro Wyeth paid 42 billion. We can't continue this and complain about the price of the pills. Electronic medical records to be effective as patients go from pharmacy to pharmacy, doctor to doctor, hospital to hospital, lab to lab, nursing home to nursing home, must accumulate data in a central web based location and be run by the government, not idividuals as suggested by Dr Emanuel. A better stating point for universal health care is to adopt a system that is working elswhere or begin by quoting a fair acturarily sound, revenue neutral, premium for medicare to individuals or employers.
retired private practice physician reluctantly agrees December 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I highly recommend Zeke Emanuel's book Health Guaranteed (we are on a first name basis since I watched him and his brothers being interviewed on Charlie Rose). The author is a practicing physician who outlines a very well thought-out system to fix many of the problems with our health care system. He compares his plan to other types of reform that have been proposed for the USA. He also explains briefly how we arrived at our health care delivery and financing system. Furthermore, he explains that the system, not the individuals who work within the system, that is to blame for its serious flaws. br /Incoming Presidential Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel's smarter brother's proposal includes: 1. guaranteed coverage (mandates and incremental reform fail here) 2. effective cost controls (mandates and IR fail here, too) 3. high quality coordinated care (incremental reform unlikely be effective; mandates and "single-payer" fail here) 4. choice of plans and providers (incremental reform and mandates only help some here, "single-payer" doesn't) 5. fair funding (mandates and incremental reforms fail here, and no fair funding proposal has been proposed for single payer) 6. reasonable dispute resolution (no such solution has been offered with mandates, single-payer, or incremental reforms, and here even Emanuel's plan is not bullet-proof) 7. economic revitalization (none of the other plans address this adequately) Emanuel's GHA proposal completely removes healthcare financing from employers, freeing them to do what they do best. br /Dr. Emanuel answers so many questions that I cannot start to list them here. I kept reacting "yeah, but what about...?" and then he would answer. My only complaint is that for as short as the book is, it could have been much shorter, given the content. It is very repetitive, but I understand that part of its design must be to sell an idea which has been presented and refined in recent years. I do wish he had compared and contrasted it with the existing systems of other developed countries (especially recently designed ones like Taiwan and Switzerland), but I will have to find that information elsewhere. br /Given his connections, I trust that he will be given an opportunity to try to sell his plan to HHS Secretary-designate Tom Daschle, since it appears that Daschle's plan (I haven't read his book yet) is only an incremental reform plan, the likes of which Emanuel convincingly argues have always failed.
Provocative solution for our health care problems December 12, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Before I read this book, I was convinced a single-payer, Medicare for All reform was the only solution to our current crisis. I'm not so sure anymore. Dr.Emanuel argues eloquently for a system of national health insurance that keeps the private insurance companies, but does not allow them to turn people down for pre-existing conditions. He calls for a seemingly radical plan: every American should get as good a healthcare plan as members of Congress receive!br /br /No socialist, Dr. Emanuel argues that a single-payer system, i.e. Medicare for All, will lead to long waiting lines and customer dissatisfaction. This is one of the best, if not the best, health care books I have ever read and I cannot recommend it too highly. (Are you listening, Mr.President-elect?) The one flaw in the book is Dr.Emanuel's proposal for a VAT tax to pay for his plan. I cannot endorse that.
 Read This Book, Back This Plan July 27, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Dr. Emanuel has a smart healthcare solution for what ails us! At the heart of his plan is the method of funding, which makes so much sense. Everyone wants healthcare insurance and everyone should be willing to pay for it. Using a dedicated Value Added Tax (VAT) to pay for vouchers would be progressive, as those with more means consume more. (Credits would be given to those below an income threshold.)br /br /The VAT would capture a fair share from the illegals who currently crowd our emergency rooms for free service; it would also capture significant revenue from the illegal drug trade. br /br /Democrats should want to back it - it is truly universal healthcare. Republicans should want to back it as the plan provides vouchers to afford consumers to choose, i.e., affords competition for efficiency. Companies should want to back it because it removes a huge direct cost and disincentive for employment; workers would benefit for the same reason.br /br /Importantly, the VAT is the tax system of the era of globalization, as it is border adjustable, i.e., subtracted from exports and added to imports. The U.S. alone among its trading partners in not taking advantage of the VAT, which is supported under GATT rules and used by 135 countries today, including all of our trading partners, which get a competitive advantage over U.S. goods and services because of it. (For example, the cost of healthcare for Ford Motor is more than the cost of steel. Imagine subtracting the cost of steel from an exported car, and adding that cost onto an imported car. We would increase U.S. market share!) br /br /I bought a copy of this book for my Congressman, and for a leader in healthcare. Spread the word.
Another excellent book on the healthcare system in the USA June 23, 2008
14 out of 15 found this review helpful
Dr. Emanuel has been writing for some time on the subject of health care policy, usually in collaboration with Prof. Victor Fuchs, an eminent, but now-retired, health economist. Prof. Fuchs collaborated with Dr. Emanuel on this book, as Dr. Emanuel notes in it, but apparently the final version as published is mostly the work of Dr. Emanuel.br /br /This and two other books that I highly recommend on health care policy, A Second Opinion and Health Care Policy, are written by physicians who know the science and practice of medicine as well as the economics of medical services. Another, also very good, book, Health Care Half Truths, is co-authored by a physician. br /br /The book is fairly short, very well-written and well-organized. Dr. Emanuel spends the bulk of the book analyzing the current medical services delivery (and to a lesser extent the funding of the system), then at the end of the book makes cogent recommendations on reform.br /br /Although my personal opinion on the particular form that the financing of medical services should take (I strongly favor a single payer/insurer scheme) differs from Dr. Emanuel's view, Dr. Emanuel presents compelling evidence why a single payer/insurer scheme is inferior to his recommendation: a voucher system that is funded by a dedicated value-added tax. Dr. Emanuel recommends the continued existence of private health insurers, asserting that their presence furthers choice and potentially at least engenders competition. My perspective is that private insurance simply has no place in a medical services system. The forces that drive private health insurance companies are immutable. Private insurers inevitably increase the administrative cost of effecting payment for services. They also have no ethical role as deciders of what treatment should occur. In particular very expensive treatments with whatever probability of lengthening a patient's life should not be decided by an employee of a private company. They also will continue to seek to exclude the sick and try to enroll the healthy in their insurance plans. Those are unavoidable characteristics that, at least in my mind, argue for a single payer plan, regardless of the pitfalls that Dr. Emanuel correctly notes.
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