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Health Care Insider's Provactive Perspective on Health Care Reform

Posted on: Wednesday, 7 October 2009, 07:00 CDT

OAKLAND, Calif., Oct. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- Health Care Will Not Reform Itself: A User's Guide to Refocusing and Reforming American Health Care, is the latest installment from acclaimed author and health care industry power George C. Halvorson. In this 150-page, must-read book, Halvorson lifts the veil on what ails American health care. He tackles cost, quality and the failures of the system. Nothing is off limits.

This painfully clear book exposes the medical mystery of why health care costs more in America than anywhere in the world. Halvorson illustrates that care in this country costs more by the piece, package and patient by a wide margin. Simply stated, health care makes too much money to change. What's needed to improve the high-priced, fragmented and disorganized American care delivery system? Health Care Will Not Reform Itself offers undisputed solutions.

Halvorson convincingly argues that care and cost can be improved by a series of comprehensive actions including better coordinated care for patients with one or more chronic diseases who represent more than 75 percent of all health care costs along with the implementation of technology to connect physicians and caregivers with real time health information. These steps combined, not in isolation, would result in half as many asthma crisis, kidney failures and people dying of heart disease.

Health Care Will Not Reform Itself is a powerful book that is clear, candid and blunt. You'll never look at health care in America the same way after reading it.

Health Care Will Not Reform Itself is available online at www.amazon.com, and can be found in most major bookstores. Halvorson salutes the work of community clinics by contributing all royalties from the sale of the book to two Oakland, Calif.-based clinics -- La Clinica de la Raza and Asian Health Services. These organizations were selected because they provide health care for the underserved, many of whom would fall through the cracks of the health care system without these valued programs.

For more information about the book, visit www.georgehalvorsonbooks.com. Halvorson has written several books on national and international health care that are also worth reading.

About the Author

George C. Halvorson is chairman and chief executive officer of Kaiser Permanente, one of America's leading health care providers and nonprofit health plans, a $40 billion health care organization, serving more than 8.6 million members. Halvorson has more than 30 years of health care management experience. He is the author of comprehensive books on the U.S. health care system including Health Care Reform Now! (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco), Health Care Co-Ops in Uganda (The Permanente Press, Oakland), Strong Medicine (Random House, New York), and Epidemic of Care (Jossey-Bass, San Francisco). He is president of the International Federation of Health Plans and chairman of the Partnership for Quality Care with Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Halvorson also serves on the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) board of directors, the Institute of Medicine Task Force of Evidence Based Medicine, and the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System.

SOURCE Kaiser Permanente

Source: PR Newswire

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