Informed and humane. Some presidential candidate would be smart to sign this gentleman up as a healthcare adviser.
Through the use of a simple quadrant device, Fogoros gives consumers an understanding of how various healthcare systems work, and their multifarious–not to mention nefarious–implications.
Draw a cross: The horizontal axis represents who makes healthcare decisions, with individuals to the right and a centralized authority to the left. The vertical axis measures the quality of those decisions: high at the top and low at the bottom. Onto this four-quadrant model, Fogoros can plot the healthcare universe. For many years we lived in the lower right, the realm of entitlement and no limits and simply not sustainable. As HMOs entered the scene, we shifted to the lower left, which Fogoros describes in withering, and all-too-familiar, detail: The realm in which the doctor-patient relationship went to die and covert rationing unleashed its many ills through the Wonko bureaucrats and Gekko greedheads. The upper right, where the patient makes individualized decisions for the best care, is the province, these days, of the superrich. The upper left, with some form of institutional oversight seeking the wisest healthcare decisions raises a necessity anathema to the American sense of autonomy: rationing. The "option is to give up either our notion that healthcare is an essential entitlement or our conviction that there can be no limits on healthcare." Fogoros proceeds–with gin-clear specifics, propped by ample research, and with an abiding sense of decency–to straddle the top two quadrants (hedging to the left). The rub is rationing. Centralized authorities control a pool of money; while the pool is limited, there are potentially no limits on what can be spent on healthcare. Besides calling for universal healthcare, incentives for doing science, patient participation and returning the doctor-patient relationship, he makes brave forays into the ethics of end-of-life decisions and rationing that seeks to balance fairness with the common good. Not every reader will be sanguine with the mathematics of "quality-adjusted life-year," but at least it’s a stab at a sane measure.
Informed and humane. Some presidential candidate would be smart to sign this gentleman up as a healthcare adviser.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-9796979-0-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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