Making A Killing: HMOs and the Threat to Your Health - Softcover

Court, Jamie; Smith, Francis

9781567511680: Making A Killing: HMOs and the Threat to Your Health

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1567511686 ISBN 13: 9781567511680

Publisher: Common Courage Press, 2002

Do HMOs provide good health care while keeping costs down? Or is their dominance a major threat to American health, safety, and pocketbooks?

In Making a Killing, you'll meet some of the victims trapped in corporate medicine's stark financial calculus: the less you care, the more you profit.
-- Diagnosed with stomach cancer but unable to get HMO approval for recommended treatment, David Goodrich finally started therapy anyway. But by then the cancer had spread to his liver. He died leaving his wife Teresa, a kindergarten teacher, with $750,000 in medical bills his insurer refused to pay.
-- Five-month-old Chad Aitken was given vaccine shots which caused a reaction. When his mother called their HMO doctor for assistance, she was told, incorrectly, that her insurance had lapsed, and was refused care. Chad died.

Americans are angry -- and ready to take back control of their health. In Making a Killing, consumer activists Jamie Court and Frank Smith indict the corrupt world of managed care, and provide a "Self-Defense Kit" for overcoming HMO stonewalling techniques and getting the care you deserve. Included is a mail-in postcard for readers to vote on what kind of health care system they think is right for the country. The verdict count will be maintained on the Internet.

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From Publishers Weekly:

One of the most powerful indictments to date of the managed care industry, this scathing expos? presents case histories of those who have lost their health or their lives because an HMO denied or delayed vital treatments, tests or surgery. Consumer activist Court, advocacy director of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, and public policy consultant Smith zero in on the insidious incentive for HMOs to withhold medical care in order to increase profits, thanks to the current capitation system, which allocates a fixed lump-sum payment for every patient under a provider's care, regardless of how much treatment each needs. HMOs, as portrayed here, are institutions driven by shortsightedness, negligence and greed, in which clerks without medical licenses overrule treating physicians to make life-and-death decisions, accountants scale down medical procedures and determine patient discharge times, and taxpayers are cheated out of billions by distorted federal expense claims for reimbursement. The authors set forth an arsenal of sensible proposals for reforms that would level the playing field for patients. An appendix, "HMO Patient Self-Defense Kit," offers practical pointers on how readers can negotiate with their HMOs to get the care they need. This lively probe is must reading for anyone concerned with the health of the U.S. medical system. (Dec.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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