A Note from the Publisher: About the book

The marketing campaign has begun! The first batch of galleys of Neil Davis' book, Mired in the Health Care Morass, are done and will be mailed tomorrow to prospective reviewers. From the cover:

Mired in the Health Care Morass describes a predicament known to almost 47 million Americans: paying for medical bills without health insurance. Neil Davis navigated this financial black hole and discovered a hidden truth: medical bills don't reflect the costs of medicine. Davis describes the harrowing journey his family took in paying for cancer treatments, and comes to the well-informed conclusion that our health care system is broken, and doesn't have much to do with health.

John P. Geyman, MD, professor emeritus in family medicine at the University of Washington and author of the bestselling book, The Corporate Transformation of Health Care, read the manuscript and provided this explanatory prepublication review of Davis' work:

This is a well written and researched book illuminating the dark interior of health care financing, ranging across billing practices for physician services, drugs, laboratory and hospital services. A penetrating analysis from a consumer's point of view, unique in its detail, which shows how complex, fragmented, unaffordable, and unsustainable our market-based health care "system" has become. Motivated by the tragic illness of a family member, Davis carries his research to a study of our system as it compares with those of other industrialized nations, making a compelling case for a publicly financed system of single-payer national health insurance.