An American sickness : how healthcare became big business and how you can take it back

Summary: This book explores the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, offering advice on what can be done to solve its myriad of problems. The author discusses how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care patients deserve. Breaking down the monolithic business into its individual industries - the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, drug manufacturers - that together constitute our healthcare system, the author tells the story of the state of American medicine. Hospitals, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are collaborating with big pharmaceutical companies, which profit from the donations made by working people. Americans are dying from routine medical conditions when affordable and straightforward solutions exist. The author explains how various social and financial incentives have encouraged a disastrous and immoral system to emerge.--adapted from publisher's description.