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Loading... The End of Healing: A Journey through the Underworld of American Medicineby Jim Bailey
None No current Talk conversations about this book.  cissa | Oct 24, 2015 |  no reviews | add a review
THE END OF HEALING, A COMPELLING HISTORICAL NOVEL SET IN THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW MILLENNIUM, SHINES THE LIGHT OF TRUTH ON THE MEDICAL INDUSTRY.A looming menace lurks within the towers of American medicine. One young doctor is determined to uncover the truth. Enter the inferno with him on a journey you will never forget.Don Newman, a resident physician at the renowned University Hospital, awakens to the screams of his pager in a windowless call room in the middle of the night. He runs to the dark ward to attend to a dying woman strapped to a bed and realizes-despite working long and hard to become a doctor and having sworn to do no harm-harm has become his business.So begins Dr. Newman's quest to become a healer in a system that puts profits ahead of patients. He abandons his plans to become a cardiologist and enrolls in an Ivy League graduate program in health system science, where an unorthodox professor promises to guide him ever deeper into the dark secrets of the healthcare industry. Don joins fellow students-the alluring Frances Hunt, a sharp nurse practitioner, and Bruce Markum, a cocky, well-connected surgeon-on a journey through the medical underworld. When Dr. Newman unearths evidence of a conspiracy stretching from the halls of Congress to Wall Street and even to his small campus, his harmless course of study becomes deadly serious. Will he be silenced? Or will he find a way to save his patients and others from needless torture?Jim Bailey pulls back the exam room curtain to reveal a giant healthcare industry spiraling out of control. This literary tour de force resonates with core themes of classical literature, medical history, and science. The End of Healing brings Dante's Inferno to life for a new era and proves hell is alive and well in American healthcare today. This book will change your perspective on the U.S. medical system forever...and give you the insight you need to find real healing in today's world. No library descriptions found. |
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Wikipedia in English
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We in the USA have by far the most expensive medical system in the world -- and yet we rank 37th in positive results. This book describes why and how that happens.
And those parts of the book are fascinating and engaging. I'd known some of this before, but Bailey offers a devastating and succinct exploration of all the various aspects, and how they lead to extremely expensive yet perverse incentives and results.
That aspect is thorough and sobering.
The "novel" aspects, though, are not great.
The "evocative" prose about the landscapes, etc., is overwrought and use probably twice as many adjectives as it needs.
All the characters are ciphers, even our protagonist, Don/Dante, who is filled with angst and agonizing that is only resolved right at the end, for no special reason. His biracial status combined with his passing for white adds to his angst but has no appreciable effect on the plot, which is reasonable enough ... but then why all the prose documenting it if it's irrelevant?
The women are awful, especially the young ones. Frances, the one most present, is entirely arbitrary, and her breakup with Don makes pretty much no sense, though it advances the plot somewhat. (In fact, I was rather hoping that the foreshadowing implied that she was trans, but that was not the case.) Talk about the perfect woman! Smart, gorgeous, stacked, but with a NURSING degree so she doesn't challenge the menfolks, who are DOCTORS. And, willing to put her energy behind whatever her dude of the moment favors....
Anyway, as a novel, it's bad. Very bad.
However, as a concentrated way of learning about how the medical industry is a horrible mess and how it got to this state, it's compelling and thorough. I wish the author had written a series of essays rather than trying to make this a "story."
This is recommended for people who don't mind long books and who are fascinated by how badly our medical system has gone awry.
I received this book in exchange for writing an objective review. (