2024 Reading Challenge

2024 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 1 book toward her goal of 285 books.
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2023 Reading Challenge

2023 Reading Challenge
Jill Elizabeth has read 5 books toward her goal of 265 books.
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Book Review: The Color of Atmosphere

For today’s Book Review Tuesday post, I am featuring a slightly extended version of a book review conducted for LuxuryReading.com, a wonderful site for which I will be reviewing non-fiction on a (hopefully) regular basis. A review copy of The Color of Atmosphere was provided courtesy of LuxuryReading. The original review was posted May 20. LuxuryReading.com is also offering a chance to win a copy of the book, if you are interested – check out the review and requirements here.

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The Color of Atmosphere by Maggie Kozel, M.D.

Anyone who has watched the news or read a newspaper is likely aware that the United States is facing a crisis in health care delivery. In The Color of Atmosphere: One Doctor’s Journey In and Out of Medicine
Dr. Maggie Kozel provides her personal slant on this crisis in the context of the changing nature of her pediatric health care practice.

This engaging memoir opens with the story of Dr. Kozel’s childhood and how her less-than-ideal home life sparked both an interest in medicine and the drive to become a doctor. Her journey to (and through) college, medical school, and residency is presented in a crisp, clear voice. The stories of her personal and professional lives intertwine; she marries a colleague (a neurologist) and at the completion of their residencies the two move to Japan to fulfill their educational obligations to the U.S. Navy.

In Japan, Dr. Kozel gets her first taste of the “official” practice of medicine in a U.S. Naval Hospital; it is not until several years later, when she and her husband return to private practice in the United States, however, that she gets her first taste of the “official” U.S. health care delivery system – and the latter taste is decidedly not to her liking. So much so, in fact, that it ultimately leads her to walk away from medicine altogether.

The journey from bright-eyed, idealistic young doctor-in-training to exhausted, cynical, burned-out pediatrician is an interesting one, full of anecdotes that will touch (and occasionally break) your heart. Dr. Kozel’s book is equal parts personal story and policy analysis. In an easy-to-read narrative style, she blends the joys and challenges of pediatric medical practice from the perspective of a wife and mother with the trials and tribulations of delivering health care in the bureaucratic corporate delivery system that began to grow into its own in the late 1980s – just as she returned to the United States and to private, non-military medicine.

Dr. Kozel’s personal and professional journey, which culminates in her decision to stop practicing medicine and begin teaching high school chemistry, is presented in a way that is touching, entertaining, and insightful. The story was easy to follow and Dr. Kozel and her struggles with “corporate medicine” will likely resonate with anyone who has had occasion to engage with a health plan or hospital in the past twenty years. But resonance aside, I have to respectfully disagree with her ultimate position: that the military health care delivery system, rather than private health insurance, is the penultimate way to provide health care services and should serve as the model for U.S. health care reform.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I say this as an attorney and former health policy and government relations professional who spent fifteen years working in the insurance and pharmaceutical sectors. I started my career in Washington, DC, during the Clinton health care reform era. I have more than a little bit of experience and first-hand knowledge backing me up when I say that, while the U.S. health care delivery system is not perfect, abandoning it altogether for a government-sponsored military-esque system is neither practical nor desirable.

I empathize with Dr. Kozel’s struggle to meld her medical training with her experiences in the military and then in private practice, and agree with her that there are fundamental problems with our domestic health care system. I can certainly appreciate where she is coming from when she criticizes U.S. health care or says that she feels that there has been a steady erosion in the doctor-patient relationship over the past thirty years. I can understand why doctors do not like health insurance companies, with their policies and procedures and paperwork. But I also can appreciate and see the other side of those stories as well.

I have watched health care costs spiral out of control, watched the U.S. outspend every nation on the planet by a massive factor and yet still have some of the poorest health outcomes of the nations in the developed world, and watched the statistics on unnecessary surgeries, medical tests, and prescriptions skyrocket. Removing health insurers with their pesky policies, procedures, and paperwork would not solve any of those problems – in fact, it would exacerbate them, likely exponentially.

I may not agree with Dr. Kozel’s policy perspective or all of her politics on this issue, but I do believe that it is important that she, and other doctors, nurses, and “health care professionals” (a term she hates, but that I like because it encompasses everyone involved in medicine – it is not only doctors who deliver medical care, after all) voice their opinions and engage in the policy debate about health care reform. They have a valuable front-line perspective that cannot be overlooked if reform efforts are to be successful and to bring about meaningful change. And what better way to present such a perspective than in an engaging memoir that educates, entertains, and attempts to persuade…

4 comments to Book Review: The Color of Atmosphere

  • Sounds like an interesting book. We had our own introduction to the US healthcare system when my father got cancer. After spending his whole life paying out of pocket for sick-care insurance he and my mom basically had to go bankrupt in order for him to be able to get medication.

    I would say that our sick-care system needs a huge reform but there are no politicians with a backbone willing to tackle the issue head on.

    http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

    • Unfortunately I have heard stories similar to that of your parents all too often. I agree that our sick-care system is pretty much broken, and that finding the political will to actually bring about meaningful reform has proven – and is likely to continue – to be next to impossible because at this point “reform” will require us to “rebuild” rather than “refurbish”… Thanks for your comment MoLB – it was an interesting read.

  • So enlightening. I had a son who passed away at the hospital and his bill was close to a million dollars. It’s cray how much medical care can cost.

    I’m following. 😉

    ecwrites.com

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