A landmark book that shows us exactly how we have let health and medicine become a crisis in our society and what we can all do to resolve it Healthcare is no longer just a public issue; for millions of Americans it is now a crisis on their own doorstep. Costs of medical care today are a leading cause personal bankruptcy. Although policy makers have weighed in on all sides, in this book, bestselling author Andrew Weil, M.D. identifies the root of the problem. He shows us exactly how we have become embroiled in the present situation and provides a solution that will not only make healthcare affordable, but will also put each one of us on the road to optimum health. Dr. Weil states that we have a right to good healthcare that is effective, accessible, and affordable. Many Americans would be surprised to know that our national health is far from the best in the world, even though we spend more money on it than any other country. The World Health Organization recently rated America thirty-seventh in health outcomes, on par with Serbia. Tackling head-on The Three Major Myths of American Medicine, Dr. Weil shows how medical schools fail to give future doctors the education they need to care for patients, how insurance companies have destroyed our opportunity to get excellent care, and how pharmaceutical companies have come to rule our lives. The solution involves nothing less than the creation of a completely new culture of health and medicine in this country, one that we can each start building today.

"For as long as he has served at the highest levels of business and government, Vice President Dick Cheney has also been one of the world's most prominent heart patients. Now, for the first time ever, Cheney, together with his longtime cardiologist Jonathan Reiner, MD, shares the very personal story of his courageous thirty-five-year battle with heart disease, from his first heart attack in 1978 to the heart transplant he received in 2012. In 1978, when Cheney suffered his first heart attack, he received essentially the same treatment as President Eisenhower had in 1955. Since then, cardiac medicine has evolved in extraordinary ways, and Cheney has benefited from nearly every medical and technological breakthrough along the way. At each juncture, when Cheney faced a new health challenge, the technology was one step ahead of his disease. In many ways, Cheney's story is the story of the evolution of modern cardiac care. Heart is the riveting, singular memoir of both doctor and patient, tracking their relationship as it unfolds over many years and crises. Like no US politician has before him, Cheney opens up about his health struggles, sharing harrowing, never-before-told stories about the challenges he faced during a perilous time in our nation's history. Dr. Reiner provides his perspective on Cheney's case and also gives readers a fascinating glimpse into his own education as a doctor. He masterfully chronicles the important discoveries, radical innovations, and cutting-edge science that have changed the face of medicine and saved countless lives. Powerfully braiding science with story and the personal with the political, Heart is a sweeping, inspiring, and ultimately optimistic book that will give hope to the millions of Americans affected by heart disease"--

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.” — The New York Times America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing—and failing to change—the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation. But by chance America’s Bitter Pill ends up being much more—because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare “policy” rethinks it from a hospital gurney—and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result: a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. Praise for America’s Bitter Pill “An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.” —The New York Times Book Review “A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the ‘toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system.’ ” — Los Angeles Times “A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.” — The Daily Beast “One of the most important books of our time.” —Walter Isaacson “Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossible—written an exciting book about the American health system.” — The New York Review of Books

The competition for limited health care resources is intensifying. We urgently need an acceptable method for deciding how they should be allocated. But the goods that health care produces are of very different kinds. Health care can extend the lives of children and of older people. It can make it possible for a person to walk, when without health care that person would be permanently bedridden; and it can reduce the pain and distress of people who are terminally ill. How can we possibly decide which of these - and many more - diverse achievements of health care are more deserving than others? We need a common unit by which we might be able to measure these very different goods. The Quality-Adjusted Life Year, or QALY, is the most developed proposal for such a unit of measure. In this book a distinguished team of ethicists and economists defend the core of the QALY proposal: that health care resources should be used so as to produce more years of life, of the highest possible quality. This leads to a discussion of such fundamental questions as whether all lives are of equal value, whether health care should be allocated on the basis of need and whether the QALY approach incorporates an adequate account of fairness or justice. The result is the most thorough account yet of the ethical issues raised by the use of the QALY as a basis for allocating health care resources.