Distracted

April 15, 2017

"It's complicated" and "the devil is in the details" are the mantras of family physician Hahn's critique. Disgruntled by most aspects of U.S. health care and peppering his text freely with sarcasm, Hahn details what he sees as the problems and offers a series of "fixes." He describes obstacles to his own medical practice in navigating treatment authorizations, setting fees, and trying to collect those fees from various payers. He argues that much of what is wrong, from requiring electronic health record systems to overlapping forms of record keeping, results from good intentions taken too far. In most cases, he suggests simplification as the answer. Not a firm advocate of either a free market or a single-payer solution, the author posits that either might be used, yet that the goal needs to be affordable care for everyone. What we currently have results in inefficiency, frustration for all players, and sometimes harm to the patient. VERDICT Concise but detailed and presenting a clear point of view, this book should appeal to both consumers and policymakers interested in getting into the weeds of the work of a physician day to day.--Richard Maxwell, Porter Adventist Hosp. Lib., Denver

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