I found this book fascinating. As a physician I deeply appreciate the perspective, history and ethical evaluations this book provides to understand the forces that currently shape medicine in the US. I read the book with increasing interest. The author writes as a scholar, but the book is quite readable. She explains that "Ordinary Medicine" is beneath the radar and has been formed by the forces of funding/reimbursement--focusing on Medicare, an aging society and the shift from patriarchal medicine to "shared decision making" which often foists a huge burden upon patients. Until I read this book, I had no idea that implantable defibrillators had become so ubiquitous in elderly patients and she describes a situation--a perfect storm--of unlimited Medicare funding for hospital based medicine, technological advances and clinical guidelines that encourage intervention. She evaluates the ethics and practice of transplant medicine where organs are allocated by time on the list and quite elderly patients receive organs from much younger donors. The system is in desperate need of change, and yet as she quoted a physician daughter of a terminally ill patient harshly responding "more is more" to a physician's attempt to palliate. Americans are terrified of rationing and lack of access to treatment in healthcare, but this book shows how so much of the "evidence based" decisions are often based on reimbursement, market forces and unexamined ethical quandaries. And conflicts of interest abound. Most of us in medicine need perspective and we're often in the trenches and unable to take this long view. This book provides much needed clarification and exploration of the unseen forces behind "Ordinary Medicine".