Next Medicine: The Science and Civics of Health - Hardcover

Bortz MD, Walter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195369688 ISBN 13: 9780195369687

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Every year, the average American spends about $7,300 on medical expenses. The typical Canadian pays $2,700, the Briton only $2,000. And yet, according to the World Health Organization, our healthcare system, in terms of total quality, ranks thirty-eighth in the world, right between Costa Rica and Slovenia. Not only do 40 million Americans lack health insurance, but more than 200,000 die each year because of medical mistakes. Our average life expectancy is lower than Cuba's.

In Next Medicine, Dr. Walter Bortz zeroes in on why the American medicine is spiraling toward disaster. A physician with fifty years of experience and a leading authority on aging, Bortz argues that the financial interests of biotech and drug companies have distorted the healthcare system. Thanks to them, medicine today is economically motivated to treat disease rather than to prevent it. Heart disease, for example, is widely treated with drug interventions and invasive surgery--both of which are extravagantly profitable for pharmaceutical giants and hospitals. Daily exercise and a healthy diet, on the other hand, can prevent heart disease, and can be obtained by patients essentially for free--but there's no money in that. The medical-industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping us sick, and until that changes medicine will fail to effectively address the leading cause of disability and mortality today: chronic diseases like diabetes that are largely preventable. Bortz proposes a medical system that emphasizes personal responsibility and provides incentives for healthy lifestyle choices, along with new training for medical professionals.
Through a lively narrative full of personal anecdotes and jarring statistics, Bortz makes a powerful case for a radically new medical system--one that is based on rigorous science and loosens the strangle hold of corporate interests on American health.

About this title

About the Author

Walter Bortz II, M.D., is Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the Stanford School of Medicine. He is an authority on aging, a marathon runner, and the author of We Live Too Short and Die Too Long: How to Achieve and Enjoy Your Natural 100-Year-Plus Life Span and Living Longer for Dummies.

From Booklist

The title is the only dull part of Next Medicine, a fascinating look at how Americans spend their health-care dollars. In this persuasive book, Stanford University doctor Bortz (an avid marathon runner) convincingly argues for more “individual responsibility” when it comes to preventing illnesses from AIDS to heart disease. He uses alarming statistics: in the United States, one in five meals is eaten in a car, “resulting in the anomaly that gas stations make more money from food and cigarettes than from gas.” And Americans spend nearly 20 percent of the gross national product on health care today—up from just 4 percent a half-century ago. That $2.5 trillion a year works out to $8,200 a person on average, yet 5 percent of the population spends half that money. (The biggest chunk goes to facilities charges: Bortz’s was $11,000 for a recent four-hour knee arthroscopy.) Sadly, the United States leads the world in only one health-care category: cost. Bortz concludes that the best, cheapest way for Americans to lower their medical bills is to “take a walk, not a pill.” --Karen Springen

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0195369688
• ISBN 13: 9780195369687
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 264