The Nature of Health : How America Lost, and Can Regain, a Basic Human Value

This book presents a coherent, affordable and logical way to build a healthcare system. It refocuses from how to provide healthcare to how to achieve health. The book argues against a health system fixated on the pursuit of longevity and suggests an alternative, more human goal.

Certain to be controversial is the argument that public money should not be spent on medical services after a person reaches his/her expected life expectancy. While not invoking Soylent Green-type recycling of the elderly, Dr. Fine (a primary-care physician/community organizer) and Peters (a former healthcare administrator/writer who is a patient of Dr. Fine''s) argue that America needs to treat its dysfunctional healthcare system by redefining health as: "the ability to have relationships, not the demand of living forever...." Their proposed funding model combines modified medical savings accounts with a population-based primary-care structure. The book includes clinical stories of patients and references, but is not indexed. Published by Radcliffe Publishing, UK, and distributed in the US by BookMasters. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)