The Health Care Consumer's Manifesto: How to Get the Most for Your Money
304
The Health Care Consumer's Manifesto: How to Get the Most for Your Money
304eBook
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Overview
This book navigates and demystifies the confusing world of health care shopping. Readers go on a guided tour inside American health care to learn why it is so messy, and who is invested in keeping it that way. The text offers a new vision of how health care could work if it were truly designed to meet consumer needs, creating a call to action on how to demand and help create such a system.
A wake-up call to an industry tenuously holding on to the status quo and ripe for true disruption, this book outlines what consumers can do themselves and demand from doctors, hospitals, health plans, and policy makers to get more for their health care spending and, in so doing, reshape the health care system into one we all deserve. Using real and compelling consumer stories intertwined with expert analysis, this book illustrates why it is so difficult to act as an engaged health care consumer in the United States and pulls back the curtain to expose the forces that hold the system in place.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9798216095057 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 02/24/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 7 - 17 Years |
About the Author
Deborah Dove Gordon, MBA, is a seasoned health care executive, marketing expert, and thought leader. A senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School's Center for Business and Government, she conducted extensive research on health care consumerism.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Part 1 Consumer Power
Introduction: A Nation of Shoppers: Shopping our way to a better health care system 3
Chapter 1 An Ode to Shopping: How we buy everything 13
Chapter 2 This Is Not Nordstrom: How American health care fails consumers 21
Chapter 3 How Does That Make You Feel?: How psychotherapy functions as a free market and what we can learn from it 35
Chapter 4 Shopper, Know Thyself: How different types of people engage with health care differently 53
Part 2 The Consumer Manifesto
Chapter 5 How Much Will This Cost?: How to find-and read-the health care price tag 69
Chapter 6 Can You Do Any Better on the Price?: Negotiating our way to lower health care costs 87
Chapter 7 Who's in Charge Here?: How consumers are left alone to navigate their own health care situations 103
Chapter 8 Listen! Why consumers' own voices are often overlooked and what we lose as a result 119
Chapter 9 Don't You Know Who I Am?: How to define health care quality for yourself 135
Chapter 10 Should My Boss Control My Health Care?: Untangling health insurance from employment 153
Chapter 11 Speak Our Language: How jargon keeps consumers out of the loop, and how to reclaim the language of health care 163
Chapter 12 It's No Kayak: Why choosing health insurance is so hard for humans 175
Chapter 13 Money-Back Guarantee: How to get what you pay for 189
Part 3 Getting Better
Chapter 14 Everyone Has Teeth: Why dental care and coverage are separate from everything else and why that needs to change 205
Chapter 15 Keep Your Government Hands off My Medicare! What everyone else can learn from savvy seniors 225
Chapter 16 Attention Shoppers! How to move the health care market with your wallet 241
Notes 247
Index 277
What People are Saying About This
"Deb Gordon has captured the pain of dealing with health care and how it can be worse than the pain of illness itself for consumers. Until we align the interests of patients, payers and providers in new models of payment and care delivery, we will continue to see consumers challenged by the illogical and unkind structures of a system built for a different time. New market entrants recognize the importance of consumer experience and trust; traditional health care entities must begin to think of consumers as customers who are paying for a third of health care expenditures or more. The book brings readers deep into consumer mindsets, revealing the depth to which consumers are struggling with their evolving role as health care buyers. Anyone trying to understand what it means to be engaged in the American health care system, especially as a consumer, should read this book and think hard about how to rebuild a system that is meant to treat the hearts and minds of consumers, but has lost touch with those organs along the way."
"As a patient and a medical provider, I am grateful for this book. It is packed with wisdom and practical advice with the power to improve the health care experience, and ultimately health outcomes, for all. Through personal stories, it captures the essence of what is broken in health care today—a system built on the flawed assumption that the doctor always knows best—and reminds us that we all have the ability and the right to speak out and be heard."
"We are in a consumer-driven economy. Many of us spend more time thinking about our next cup of coffee than we do our own health care. The Health Care Consumer's Manifesto takes a close look at health care today and shines a light on how consumers can and should be more active and informed about their well-being."
"In The Health Care Consumer's Manifesto, Deborah Gordon explores in depth the fact that despite spending over a trillion dollars and rising out of pocket on health care, we rarely use our power as consumers to get the best quality and lower price. She explores why this is currently so, why this is changing, and what consumers can do to hasten this change. A must read for anyone who has been frustrated with the experience, quality, or cost of health care in the U.S.; and for providers, payers and policy makers to prepare for the new world to come."
"At a critical time in the transformation of the American health care system, Deb Gordon provides a terrific libretto for this most complex and incomprehensible opera. She brilliantly empowers American consumers to better access and demand real value and quality for what are truly the most important services and products that they can access for their families and themselves."
"This is an important book that serves as a call to action from every health care consumer, because it addresses the most critical issue with our health care system, cost of care and how empowered patients must begin to take charge of their personal experiences with the system. Full of poignant anecdotal stories, The Healthcare Consumer’s Manifesto includes excellent guidelines on how to determine and negotiate the cost of a procedure or treatment; how to understand the parameters of various insurance programs; and most importantly how to assert your voice as an activated e-patient. For every individual who is frustrated with the system and grappling with how to manage their cost of care, this is a must read."
"Deb Gordon does away with tired old arguments against price transparency and goes right to the heart of the matter: where else would consumers be expected to pay without first knowing the price? This book shines a bright spotlight on the secrecy and confusion around health care pricing, and shows consumers how they can get to the price information they need to make informed health care choices."
"A sassy, upbeat manifesto for how Americans should get more from health care."
"Like a trusted friend who knows exactly what she’s talking about, Deb Gordon guides us masterfully through the health care maze . . . encouraging and empowering consumers to navigate their own unique challenges. There is hope! We need this book more than ever."
"Finally, a guide to health care written entirely with the consumer’s priorities in mind. Deborah Dove Gordon has given us a richly informative, ultra-practical guide with a wealth of useful information from how to get price transparency on health care procedures to how we can use our consumer power to change the system as a whole. Empowering, honest, and refreshingly straightforward, this is one of those books that will likely pay for itself hundreds of times over in avoided costs."
"For markets to function properly, consumers need access to information about prices and quality as well as meaningful choice. This ‘Manifesto’ doesn’t just document how badly these conditions fail in health care, it explains why our current system won’t deliver better outcomes unless health care consumers become a force for change."
"Written in lucid and engaging prose, Deb Gordon’s compelling book offers a perceptive insight into an aspect of the U.S. health care system that is not often examined—in essence, how much does health care really cost and can we have a choice in determining what we pay for? These are questions that cut across continents albeit particularly pertinent in the USA, which has one of the most expensive health care systems in the world. Deb’s book is a must read for everyone with interest in the economics of health care, in short, everyone!"
"Health care is bankrupting the American Dream and hyper-inflating personal and business health care costs are crippling the middle class and any possibilities for millennials to thrive as entrepreneurs. In this book Deborah Gordon nails it, identifying the primary individual solution to this financial epidemic as consumer engagement—each individual must become an Engaged Health Care Consumer and this book provides a road map to make that a reality for the reader."
"Deb Gordon takes a fresh look at health care spending in the U.S. She breaks through the mystery of health care and shows how people can thrive in the health system."