Uncared For
A doctor’s insider guide to the overlooked cause of our health care crisis and how to cure it
A New Book by Andy Lazris and Alan Roth shows how a decision made on the campus of Johns Hopkins in 1911 profoundly altered the course of health care to this day
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Abraham Flexner, educator
William Osler, physician
This Book by two primary care physicians explores how the Flexner Report decimated William Osler's innovative patient-centric reforms and sent American health care reeling down a corporate, numbers-focused road of high cost and poor patient outcomes that straddles us even today.
Our book looks at the health care decisions that doctors and patients grapple with every day, and the medical-industrial complex that dictates how such decisions are made, all framed in the context of the Flexner-Osler divergence. Ours is both a tale of how we arrived where we are, and a pragmatic guide for patients navigating the health care landscape and reformers who seek to script a better system. We use data and real-life examples from our collected 55 years of medical practice to help explain why this happened and how to fix it. Some issues we tackle include:
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The diagnosis and treatment of common medical conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, dementia, and heart disease
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Screening tests for cancer and other diseases
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Immunizations and health prevention
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Medical care of the elderly
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Health insurance, specialists, hospitals, medical advocacy groups, the CDC and FDA, and other gears in the health care delivery web
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Medical education
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Malpractice and quality guidelines
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Racism in health care
Both authors were on the front line of COVID, and we discuss how our experiences demonstrate the flaws of our health care system through a Flexnerian lens.
We end by paving a path forward that uses the wisdom of William Osler to reform health care in a way that makes it logical, cost effective, humanistic, and patient-centered.
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