In Excellent Health : Setting the Record Straight on America's Health Care Hardcover - 2012

Health care has become a topic of passionate debate in the United States. No one doubts that America's health care system needs change or that urgent reforms are required to ensure access and availability of the world's best medical care for the long term. But in an attempt to justify the radical reforms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of March 2010 and its premise that more government involvement is the solution to health care problems, its supporters have vilified private insurers and repeatedly criticized and unfavorably compared the quality of United States medical care to that in countries where government plays a far more prominent role in its availability and utilization. Research shows, however, that such comparisons are often misleading and contrary to factual data. This book exposes the facts about the state of America's health care system.

In Excellent Health revisits and analyzes the documents and statistics used to denigrate the quality of American health care and reaches far different conclusions. Author Scott Atlas presents the facts, as documented in scientific and medical journals, about the most important role of health care--the diagnosis and treatment of serious diseases--and shows how medical care quality in the United States compares favorably to that of other countries of the developed world. He also exposes the facts on access to medical care--one of the most fundamental requirements of any health care system--revealing that millions of people in other countries wait for appropriate diagnosis and treatment whereas Americans have superior access to timely medical care.

The author presents a plan for health care reform based on three key pillars: substantive tax reforms, including government-provided assistance for those in need; essential overhauls to private insurance; and a minimization of the government's role as direct insurer. With reforms that increase competition in the health insurance and health care markets, consumer-driven, value-based purchasing, rather than artificial government edicts, will lower costs to consumers.