Summary: Every fall, Americans find out how much their health insurance premiums will increase the following year. But this fall, they’ll have one new resource to understand (and one day fix) our broken healthcare system: a new book by Dr. Marty Makary titled “The Price We Pay.” I had the chance to interview Dr. Makary in a special pop-up edition of IWF’s She Thinks podcast. I also had the pleasure of reading an advance copy of the book. But, truth be told, at times I felt like throwing the book at a wall out of frustration. Reading stories about twisted incentives, predatory providers, and helpless patients made my heart ache. And it made me mad. But, as he says in the podcast, Dr. Makary doesn’t diagnose any problem without offering his prescribed solution and examples of those solutions in action. So the book has bright spots, too. Dr. Makary paints a realistic picture of American health care today. He doesn’t over-emphasize our problems, and he relates to the many doctors who entered their field to help and heal sick people. But he’s no Pollyanna. He calls doctors out and encourages them to also become advocates for sound policy and help heal our systemic problems, mostly related to the appropriateness of medical care and how we pay for it. I talked with him about price transparency, restoring doctor/patient relationships, and reforming healthcare laws. I enjoyed our conversation and I hope you will too.
