Articulate, loaded with informative details, especially timely, and bound to leave the reader reaching for a bottle of...
A book examines all aspects of medical care in the United States and how it has changed over the past 60 years.
Geyman (The Human Face of ObamaCare, 2016, etc.) graduated from medical school in 1956. During the subsequent 60 years, he has garnered experience as a rural family physician, a teacher and administrator in three medical schools, and an editor of family medicine journals. He has watched as corporate health behemoths have swallowed up family practice, the traditional bedrock of the relationship between physician and patient: “Family medicine, as the direct descendent of general practice, taking care of patients regardless of age, comprises less than 10 percent of the country’s physician workforce.” The service ethic of medicine, Geyman declares, has been replaced with the “business ethic,” and the result is poorer patient care. Another serious problem he addresses is the skyrocketing cost of health care. High insurance deductibles, extraordinarily escalating pharmaceutical prices, and a tendency on the part of physicians to order excessive tests and procedures to increase compensation have put basic medical care out of reach for millions of Americans. Geyman cites several breathtaking examples regarding prescription costs: the drug Hetlioz, used to treat sleep disorders, costs $148,000 per year. And “hospitals and pharmacies found the prices they had to pay for a bottle of 500 tablets of Doxycycline, a decades-old antibiotic, rose in just six months in 2014 from $20 to $1,849!” This accessible, comprehensive book makes a strong case for a complete overhaul of the U.S. health care system. No fan of the Affordable Care Act, which he says has failed to reduce costs and is a boondoggle for corporate interests, Geyman concludes that the only viable alternative is a single-payer system: “Today’s health care system, serving its corporate masters more than patients, is unfair, ineffective, inhumane for those left out, and financially unsustainable.” The dense volume is occasionally repetitive but lightened a bit by the inclusion of vignettes from the author’s personal practice. Patient anecdotes and commentaries from copious professional sources are compelling.
Articulate, loaded with informative details, especially timely, and bound to leave the reader reaching for a bottle of aspirin.Pub Date: March 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-938218-15-6
Page Count: 358
Publisher: BCH Fulfillment and Distribution
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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