IMAGINE... from Sick Care to an Ideal Healthcare System says the current book title!

Imagine a healthcare system where consumers are respected and in control? Imagine communities focused on prevention and health instead of just on sick care and where pricing is no longer hidden. Imagine a system where drugs and surgeries are more affordable and effective. Is all this possible? As a person who is currently dealing with many different chronic health conditions, I had to read on to find out what is currently being tried to get to these points and to see if it really is possible.

(Could this happen?) Hell yeah, but it must start now BEFORE it is REQUIRED. As citizens, employers, entrepreneurs, healthcare workers, elected officials, and patients, it is time for us to drive the change. Authors Aaron Fausz and Terry Howell explain how we can disrupt, dismantle, and rebuild. Real change is going to include disruptive innovation. It is not going to be easy. We did not get in this situation overnight, but we need to stop it now. Our entire population is aging and changes are going to have to be made to accommodate. We can not wait for this to continue... we need to start now.

The US healthcare system definitely needs radical reform to rein in costs, reduce harm, expand access and become customer centric. The system needs to work for the people as well as the providers.

I would welcome the changes. Real change in our healthcare system would mean much less pain and complications from my current health conditions Our economy would improve with people being able to prevent illness instead of treating it and so much more. This book brings up many valid points and shows how ideas are currently being tried in the United States to get our Healthcare System/Insurance Programs to work better for our people Take a good read to see what you can do today or what you can tell others about today. Lets start the process now.

Will you be among the daring disruptors creating the ideal healthcare system of tomorrow, today? Don't just imagine. It's time to do something. Read this book and become part of the solution.

A Solid Plan. In this book, Fausz and Howell dare to imagine what *can* be re: healthcare in the US. They open it up with a chapter called “Imagine” where they detail their ideal vision for what healthcare can be, and the following chapters are tightly structured around different groupings of the ideals they lay out in the opening chapter. One of the best jobs I’ve ever seen of the old school X-N-X structure of essays that was once taught in American schools (back in ye olden times 30 yrs ago when I was in school anyway), the authors explain the general problem of a chapter, refer back to the subset of the “Imagine” objectives, discuss where we currently are and how the objectives can be obtained, and conclude each chapter with a “key takeaways” that refers back to the “Imagine” objective. In one chapter, they discuss the pharmaceuticals issue and largely discuss (much more generally) the same things Robin Feldmann goes into much more detail on in her recent book Drugs, Money, and Secret Handshakes.

How you think of their ideals and proposed solutions is probably going to be tainted by your own personal politics, but they seem to have an even head on their shoulders. They are upfront and repeated in their claim to be driven by free market capitalism, and they show how this very system – so often derided as impossible in healthcare – can in fact be used to achieve the best results for the most people, both in ideals and in actual implementations that are already existing in the real world.

Overall a very well done book that allows and encourages the reader to follow up with their own thinking on the issue and looking into the various technologies and companies discussed throughout. Very much recommended.