Hoover Institution Press Today Releases Book Highlighting the True State of America’s Health Care System In Excellent Heal

STANFORD, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Hoover Institution Press today released a book that challenges popular criticisms regarding access to and quality of medical care in the United States, In Excellent Health: Setting the Record Straight on America’s Health Care, by Scott W. Atlas, MD. In this book, Atlas exposes the facts about the state of America’s health care. He explains why the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of March 2010 (also known as Obamacare) is “grossly flawed” and proposes a logical reform plan designed to maintain choice and access to high-quality health care while also facilitating competition among insurers and providers. Atlas emphasizes that the fundamental challenge to reforming our health care system is devising public policies that empower more Americans to get better value for their health care dollar and to foster appropriate innovation that extends and improves life.

Drawing on extensive research from scientific and medical journals, Atlas defends the quality of and access to medical care in the United States. Supporters of Obamacare, he says, have unfairly criticized and unfavorably compared the quality of medical care in the United States to that in countries where government plays a far more prominent role in an attempt to justify the idea that more government involvement will provide a solution to health care problems. Notably, Atlas explains that the 2000 World Health Organization report ranking the United States low among international health care systems has been exposed in peer-reviewed journals as an agenda-driven, biased compilation of misleading statistics, yet this report still serves as the fundamental basis for the allegedly poor quality of US health care. Atlas further demonstrates two overtly flawed and indirect measures of health care quality—overall life expectancy and infant mortality—and claims that the juxtaposition of severely flawed data, combined with the fact that health expenditures are higher in the United States than anywhere else in the world, has rationalized the imposition of more government control of health care.

Further, in In Excellent Health, Atlas points out that Obamacare represents a political and philosophical agenda rather than a fiscal solution. He explains that expanding an entitlement health insurance program will shift costs onto those with private health insurance. In addition, Atlas claims, not only does this sweeping legislation provide the government with increased power to directly and indirectly restrict care, but it fails to address the single most important issue regarding reform—rising health care costs.

Importantly, in this book, Atlas proposes a new plan for health care policy, which includes three critical areas of reform: reforming the tax structure, including government-provided assistance for those most in need; overhauling private insurance; and minimizing the role of government as a direct insurer. He argues that reforming these areas will reduce health costs and help maintain essential support for America’s most vulnerable citizens, seniors and low-income families, without jeopardizing the exceptional health care quality and access to this health care in the United States.

Scott W. Atlas, MD, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, professor of radiology and chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center, and senior fellow by courtesy at the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford.

For more information on In Excellent Health, visit HooverPress.org. For more information on the Hoover Institution, visit Hoover.org or find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Scribd (keyword: Hoover Institution).



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