LEFT SHIFT
How and why America is heading to second rate, single payer health care.
by
Book Details
About the Book
As US healthcare delivery is in flux, an international surgeon dissects and scrutinizes the performance of “socialized medicine” in Britain vs the “free market” healthcare system in the US. The results are sobering. Lacking funds, resources and personnel, socialized medicine results in almost twice the death rate from breast and colon cancer and 50 percent higher mortality from “heart attack” (myocardial infarction).
The high intensity, fast paced US healthcare can presently afford such luxuries as aggressive intervention for cardiac disease, technology-laden surgical procedures and intensive screening for cancer. Meanwhile Britain’s cash-strapped NHS is over-stretched in keeping up with today’s emergencies, with precious few resources to avert tomorrow’s tragedies.
As the Affordable Care Act becomes a reality, US health care delivery takes a sharp turn leftward, following the same trajectory as Britain. Underfunded and overwhelmed, only seven of the original twenty-three health care co-operatives remain open, leaving the US taxpayer with a $1.7 billion dollar bill, and almost one million Americans uninsured, again. Health care is on a fast track to a Lehman Brothers 2.0, when the health care sector will be on life support from the US taxpayer, and a single payer system will emerge, with its second rate outcomes. When this day dawns, a US national health service will surface, just like Britain’s: “Free for all, from cradle to grave”. And accountable to none.
About the Author
Dr. David Armstrong, a triple boarded surgeon, has operated for over 30 years in Britain’s National Health Service and in the US health care system. He has worked in the Royal Infirmaries of Manchester and Edinburgh in the UK, and Yale University and the Mayo Clinic in the US. Dr. Armstrong has had a front seat to the demise of the health service in Britain, and sees a similar fate for health care in the US.
In addition to a full time surgical practice, Dr. Armstrong has extensive scientific publications researching complex surgical conditions and is the pioneer of a number of innovative surgical devices and medications that are now used around the world. His other contributions to the advancement of the study of medicine include creating the first colorectal fellowship program in the Southeast United States, in Atlanta GA. The program continues to provide training for the best and brightest doctors in America.
Dr. Armstrong is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, the American College of Surgeons and the American Society of Colorectal Surgeons. Dr Armstrong lives and practices in Atlanta GA.