New book from John Geyman M.D.: America’s Mighty Medical-Industrial Complex

||| FROM EMILY GEYMAN |||

The rise of an enormous medical-industrial complex over the last 60 years in the United States has brought wealth to ever-larger corporations, their shareholders, and CEOs at the expense of most Americans who struggle gaining access to affordable health care.

Dr. Geyman describes the failures of our current healthcare “system” and compares, based on evidence and values, the three main alternatives for health care reform being proposed in Congress.

Despite its might on Wall Street, the medical-industrial complex left our country poorly prepared to meet the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic, together with its resultant economic downturn. A third simultaneous threat—systemic racism, was made obvious by the inequities of disproportionate numbers of COVID-19 deaths among minorities. That becomes a triple crisis that has starkly exposed the many flaws of our corporatized profit-driven non-system that puts profits ahead of care for patients and their families.

This book describes how the status quo is untenable, describes three alternative approaches to health care reform, and shows what a “new normal” can and should look like based on evidence and values of equity and service instead of profiteering, corruption and fraud. This will be an ultimate battle royal between corporate America and Main Street that we can’t afford to lose.

Dr. Geyman has also published a 29 page pamphlet: Common Sense:  Medicare for All. What Will It Mean for Me? The publications are available at Griffin Bay Bookstore in Friday Harbor and Darvill’s Bookstore in Eastsound.

John Geyman, M.D. is professor emeritus of family medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, where he served as Chairman of the Department of Family Medicine from 1976 to 1990. As a family physician with over 21 years in academic medicine, he also practiced in rural communities for 13 years. Since 1990 he has been involved with research and writing on health policy and health care reform. He served as president of Physicians for a National Health Program from 2005 to 2007, and is a member of the National Academy of Medicine. John has authored 20 books.