Dissecting American Health Care: Commentaries on Health, Policy, and Politics

The intersection of health care, politics, and policy is a controversial one, and this book of lively essays takes on all of today's hot health topics: alternative medicine, health care reform, screening mammograms, taxes to decrease soda consumption, gun control, and many more.

Former Assistant Surgeon General Douglas Kamerow, a family doctor, journal editor, NPR commentator, and Chief Scientist at RTI International, combines evidence, opinion, and humor in 47 short essays taken from his health policy columns in the international medical journal BMJ and his nationally broadcast radio commentaries.

Some of Dr. Kamerow's many pronouncements:

• "Guns don't kill crowds, but mentally disturbed people with high capacity semiautomatic pistols do."
• "Just as 'on the web no one knows you are a dog,' it is also true that on the web many will not know you are a charlatan or a well-meaning naïf."
• "The Pope's job is to be the spiritual leader of the world's Catholics. It would be a true blessing if he could do that without advocating policies that endanger the health of some of the world's neediest people."
• "Screening people at one-day themed events, let alone on the web, strikes me as both a waste of everyone's time and a misleading promise of diagnosis and treatment that probably won't be delivered."

Other early reviews:

"One of the giants of medicine and public health...takes on the most critical issues we face, with clarity, brevity, and yet depth. I enjoyed reading this book, and so will you."
--Dr. David Satcher, former Surgeon General

"Dr. Kamerow's essays are witty, informed, curious, exasperated, provocative, constructive and just plain human. Kamerow writes in a way that invites general readers to realize that they have a stake here too - that these are their stories as well."
--Dr. Ranit Mishori, past Health Editor, Parade Magazine

"Dr. Kamerow shares with Atul Gawande and Malcolm Gladwell keen insight, lucid writing, and accessible brilliance. You don't need to be an insider to clearly understand what he's talking about."
--Dr. Jay Siwek, editor, American Family Physician

"Doug Kamerow's exceptional experience and wisdom in primary care, public health, and health policy are collected in a highly engaging series of brief, thoughtful, and informative essays on the major health issues that confront us--as individual and as a nation--every day. He writes with insight, wit, and clarity..."
--Dr. J. Michael McGinnis, Senior Scholar, Institute of Medicine

"Family doctor Doug Kamerow provides us with sharp, witty and personal observations about preventive medicine and public health in the U.S. His commentaries on how current events, trends and politics are intertwined with both offers us - the public - a rare glimpse of the complexity of implementing the popular notion that we can easily fix health care by preventing disease in the first place." 
--Dr. Jessie Gruman, President, Center for Advancing Health