Weinberg, Stephen E., M.D. U.S. Healthcare on Life Support: Resuscitating the Dying System. Denisher Pr. Nov. 2007. c.128p. index. ISBN 978-0-9793802-3-5. pap. $15.95. MED

A cardiologist in practice for more than 30 years and a managing partner of his group practice for a dozen, Weinberg presents a look at the American health-care financing system. His hope is that the information will help readers become more knowledgeable participants in the ongoing debate over the future of that system. He starts from the increasingly accepted premise that the system is failing, using accessible statistics to explain what real costs are built in and which might be susceptible to change. As he moves through the costs and problems of wages, hospitals, private insurance, public programs, the uninsured, and pharmaceutical companies, he makes pertinent comparisons to other less-costly national systems. Ultimately, like Christine Cassel in Medicare Matters: What Geriatric Medicine Can Teach American Health Care, he suggests expanding Medicare, which he sees as providing good and more cost-effective care, as the basis of a single-payer system. A useful addition to the growing number of books on health-care reform. Recommended for public and medical libraries.—Dick Maxwell, Porter Adventist Hosp. Lib., Denver