Sadie's Fight Non-Profit Organization

Little over a month ago, I knew little of the ongoing debate over health care reform in our country, and being in the charity health care industry I wanted a better understanding of what the problems are and what options we had to fix them. So, last month I read a book I picked up called “The Healing of America: A Global Quest For Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care” by T. R. Reid.

Throughout the first half of the book, Reid takes you country by country through a series of developed nations who have established democracies like the United States, but offer universal health coverage, something the US has failed to provide even with all of our other triumphs. What is the purpose of Reid’s journey? It’s a quest for relief to a sore shoulder of his that limits his golf swing.

Reid spends quite a few chapters relaying his stories and experiences of the health care system of each country he visited looking for a fix to his bum shoulder. He dives deep into the intricacies of health insurance coverage for each country and how the governments decided to pay for it. He gives the reader a very good perspective on how they can expect to receive varying types of medical treatment, and how they will (or will not) pay for it, depending on the country they’re in.

The last half of the book, after examining international health policies across the globe and identifying the best and worst parts, Reid discusses the convoluted and overlapping American approaches to health care and insurance, and what we can learn from other countries to improve or even replace our expensive, exclusive processes. Namely, he shows us how we can prevent tens of thousands of people dying every year due to a lack of access to basic and preventative health care and lack of access to medicine and cures for treatable illnesses.

After reading this book, it is clear to me that we as a country need to change our minds about who should be eligible for health care. The correct answer to me is “Everybody!” but currently our country doesn’t seem to agree. Thousands of people die every year, hundreds every DAY, from treatable and preventable diseases. To me, that is disgusting, and we should not be OK with it. Every other developed democracy in the world (including but not limited to Japan, France, Germany, the UK, Canada, and even newly reformed Taiwan) has developed some kind of national health care and insurance model that includes guaranteed access to medical care for every single person in the country, regardless of the financial and social standings. Not only that, but based on % of Gross Domestic Product, all of these countries even pay less (MUCH less) than the US does for their health coverage!

Universal health coverage, which is cheaper and more effective than the system we have now that excludes the poor and unfortunate, not only exists but has been proven over and over again in various other countries. This book shows us how we can use the lessons and examples from other countries to change our values on health care as a country, and adopt a new system for health care and insurance coverage that would be affordable for everybody. But you gotta read it first.

Whether you feel strongly about the need for health care reform or have no idea about health care policies and want to learn, this book presents a wide spectrum of information and personal experience from the author regarding the inner workings of health care systems around the world in an altruistic and humorous manner and I highly recommend . Check out the link below to get yourself a copy.

The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care by T. R. Reid