Healthcare Upside Down: A Critical Examination of Policy and Practice

Inspired by witnessing and experiencing the changes in healthcare and its delivery over the past 50 years, Dr. Henry Buchwald observes and comments on the current state of healthcare in the United States. His narrative includes the history, the historical data, and personal experiences of a healthcare system that has moved away from caring, first and foremost, for patients. This expensive, impersonal system, he believes may not be in the best interest either of the nation or of the people it purports to heal. As the title suggests, it appears that healthcare has been turned upside down to serve the administrators of the system and away from its basic function of offering the best care for patients. With this basic principle in mind, the topics presented in this book provide and discuss healthcare statistics and alterations to the language of medicine. The chapters themselves examine the transformations to the medical school, the clinic and the office, the hospital, and the practice. Additional chapters discuss the role of the payers, public health research, as well as pandemics, including COVID-19, the advantages and disadvantages of socialized medicine, as well as the broken doctor/patient relationship. Finally, Dr. Buchwald offers thoughts on the areas in which future healthcare efforts can most fruitfully be expended. Analysing today’s pervading administrative domination of essentially every facet of healthcare, Healthcare Upside Down thoughtfully considers the variety of ways in which we can turn the current healthcare system right-side up to serve those who should be the ultimate beneficiaries – all of us as patients, now and in the future.