THE PLOT AGAINST THE PATIENT

The last six months has seen Martin Gross' The Doctors, a gentler Anonymous, M.D.'s The Healers Edwin Hoyt's Condition Critical. The Hospital Crisis and now this one by veteran book and feature writer Cook. This is closest to Hoyt's book and although some of the illustrative material is differently based and organized, the conclusions are the same. How could they be otherwise? lack of desks in medical schools, beds in hospitals; new techniques, old plants; shortages of personnel; fantastic costs. Cook draws on a good deal of the evidence which has had wide newspaper coverage in this area recently at both the city and state level; he also goes to L.A. where Watts has no hospitals, other blighted rural areas. After inadequate Blue Cross and Shield, there's the Medicare breakthrough --""explosion"" which is only a temporary measure. A great deal of money still needs to be spent to provide proper hospitals, comprehensive care.... Cook's book is somewhat more exhaustive than Hoyt's and just about as readable. But then -- there's that patient -- will he survive another work-up?