Health against wealth

Wall Street Journal reporter George Anders explains why managed care is so appealing to employers and insurers and how HMO bureaucrats can thwart necessary, even life-saving treatment under the guise of cost efficiency. Health Against Wealth takes an unflinching look at the profit-hungry entrepreneurs who have poured into this new "health industry" and provides alarming examples of political manipulation by increasingly powerful HMO lobbyists. At the same time, the book explores the hopes and frustrations of people in the health-care system: patients facing life-threatening crises, renowned doctors humbled by the constraints of the new medical bureaucracy, disillusioned social planners who genuinely thought they had found a better way to provide health care. Anders concludes with a compelling list of corrective measures that can make the managed-care revolution work in the public interest. He recommends a new round of consumer activism, tighter regulation of HMOs' ways of paying doctors and hospitals, and the creation of independent review boards to help make decisions about complex cases. He also calls for redefining the term "emergency" to ensure fuller coverage in a crisis; holding HMOs accountable for their mistakes through the courts; and forming doctor-employer partnership that can bypass HMOs entirely.