Maggie Mahar's New Book on Moyers re Money-Driven Healthcare

by L.A.S.

I have been citing and linking to Maggie Mahar's web site for at least a year. To my great joy she has finally published a book and has appeared on PBS's weekly Bill Moyers program. The book is titled, “Money-Driven Medicine: What's Wrong with America's Healthcare and How to Fix It.”

Let me say that I am so glad for Ms. Mahar that her hard journalistic work has finally come together into a book and documentary. She demonstrates what it is really like for doctors who came out of medical school eager to heal people, and then get bulldozed by a corporate form of medicine that tells them they have to bring in X amount of dollars per week for the practice.

Patients who do not have a primary care doctor wind up going to see several specialists. This fragmentation of medical care not only is more expensive, but less cohesive and may even endanger your life. Lack of oversight by one coordinating physician means no one is checking whether your medications are duplicating or cancelling each other out.

Moyers spared no mercy on the current Obama administration for how it has changed since Obama was a candidate and promised and end to the bad old ways of negotiating programs behind closed doors.

BARACK OBAMA: The pharmaceutical industry wrote into the prescription drug plan that Medicare could not negotiate with drug companies. And you know what, the chairman of the committee who pushed the law through went to work for the pharmaceutical industry making $2 million a year. Imagine that. That's an example of the same old game-playing in Washington. I don't want to learn how to play the game better. I want to put an end to the game-playing.

BILL MOYERS: Now look at this recent story in the LOS ANGELES TIMES. Lo and behold, since the election, the pharmaceutical industry's $2 million dollars a year superstar lobbyist Billy Tauzin has morphed into President Obama's pal. Tauzin says the President has promised not to pressure the drug companies to negotiate with the government for lower drug prices and has agreed not to allow cheaper drugs to be imported from Canada or Europe - contrary to the position taken by candidate Obama…

Bill Moyers featured the book on his Friday PBS show on Aug. 28. Please visit his site at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08282009/profile.html for the interview and the broadcast of the Alex Gibney documentary by the same name. You can also click on a box on the right-hand column to ask Maggie Mahar a question about health care reform.

The web site for the book with clips and transcripts of the interview on Bill Moyers is at http://moneydrivenmedicine.org/