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Surviving
The Health Care
System - Your guide to understanding it, surviving it, and getting what you need from it By DrRich Introduction What's the difference between understanding the health care system and understanding the stock market? Well, if you get the stock market wrong, you only lose your money. Unfortunately, almost everyone is getting the health care system wrong these days. Depending on where you're sitting, the problems we're experiencing with American health care are caused by the heartless HMO's, the overzealous regulators, the greedy doctors, or the overly demanding patients. And while there's some truth to all these explanations, none of them really hits the mark. |
This lack of understanding is anything but benign. Until we grasp the true causes of our growing health care crisis, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes; the crisis will continue to worsen, and eventually we'll all pay the price, deeply and personally.
Today in the American health care system you're more alone and more at risk than you probably realize. This is a system growing more dysfunctional - and more hostile - by the day. You need to learn how to protect both yourself and any loved ones who may need health care. But in order to survive this health care system, first you must understand it.
In Surviving the Health Care System we'll explore the truth about the American health care system. We'll examine what's really behind all the apparent chaos, and help you develop strategies to maximize your benefit, and minimize your risk, whenever you need health care. We'll explain the health care system in a way you've probably never heard it explained before. And we'll try to provide you with the guidance you need when the time comes - as it inevitably will - to make those critical decisions about your own health care.
While we'll be dealing specifically with the American health care system, the basic principles and premises we are about to explore can explain the chaos occurring in health care systems throughout the Western world.
In The Basic Problem, we'll define the single most important issue underlying the dysfunction within our health care system - the systematic destruction of the doctor-patient relationship.
In The Health Care System - Explained at Last! we'll show exactly what's really going on today in the health care system, and in a way that finally makes sense. We'll show you why doctors, HMOs and federal regulators do all those things they do. And while we doubt you'll find yourself sympathizing with their nefarious activities, you may come away feeling that, when they treat you that way, they actually have very little choice in the matter. With such understanding comes strength - because knowing they're not going to change their approach (to a large extent because they can't) should make you realize you're going to have to change yours.
Finally, in Becoming an Effective Patient, we'll show you how to put these new insights to work for you, to protect yourself in this hostile environment, and get the health care you need.
Next - The Basic Problem
Surviving the Health Care System is adapted with permission from YourDoctorintheFamily.com
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