Health Care Revolt: How to Organize, Build a Health Care System, and Resuscitate Democracy―All at the Same Time

Dr. Fine's experience as a family physician and as Director of Rhode Island Public Heath gives him the advantage of seeing policies in action at the grassroots and how policies have a population impact. He presents an understandable explanation of what is ailing healthcare and the health of the United States. We are not the healthiest country by almost every marker and he shows us why.His core idea in the book its that we have a healthcare market, not a functional healthcare system. Profits are placed over patients by insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, and the pharmaceutical industry. He clearly shows that we have both wasteful high cost care while vulnerable populations don't have access to basic and preventive services.However his message isn't one of doom and gloom, he shows what is possible by highlighting bright spots throughout the country and world of what is working and making measurable differences. His prescription is to put health and healthcare back in the community with his vision for community health stations that would focus on primary care, mental health and dental health. He also shows us that healthcare isn't even the biggest impact on our health. He calls on communities to focus attention on education, community centers, healthy nutrition, public safety, and housing to achieve better health for the individual and population. The Movement for Health Care in America is possible and Dr. Fine has given us the script that we have to fill together to stop being sick and instead be well as a nation.

The discussion of healthcare systems versus markets are incredibly important as we hear about medicare for all proposals by the presidential candidates.

Health Care revolt is a passionate treatise about everything that is wrong with the American healthcare system. That's to say a lot. Dr. Michael Fine, a family practitioner and former medical director for the Department of Health in Rhode Island, walks you through the big business of medicine, what has worked/what hasn't worked, and how the focus has shifted from caring for people to caring for profits. Medicine today is "a healthcare market, not a healthcare system", and he dares you to think critically to find a solution. The book is thought-provoking, honest, and at the heart of the grassroots campaign we all need. A great read.I received an advanced copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.

Dr. Fine's on-point manifesto challenges us to fight for our health, our communities, and our democracy. What's more, he provides a roadmap for how to get there. Of course it's a lofty goal -- but Healthcare Revolt provides a vision.

This is a ridiculous book that simply wants to trade the system in place for a system in which everyone gets tested for HIV or whatever else the disease of the day will be and everyone will have to take the medicine the experts wants them to take. Which experts? We are constantly finding out in medicine that what we thought ten years ago is wrong. How do you force people to take medicine? Because I've been a doctor for more than three decades and you cannot force people to take medicine. While I agree that corporate medicine is an expensive farce, the real key to actual health, is education. Teach people that health is YOU taking care of your health with proper food, avoiding drugs and alcohol and getting exercise. Living a healthy life isn't about constantly going to the doctor for pills that give you side effects. Getting the middle man out of medicine would require patients paying the doctor, not the insurance company. Same with hospitals.