This book exposes how regulatory and cultural changes taking place in our Country over the last forty years have fundamentally changed the delivery of medical care into the more politically appealing yet artificial concept of a healthcare system. This metamorphosis has resulted in lower standards, suboptimal quality and, effectively, a widespread downgrading of what once was an exceptional medical system. The book is written from the perspective of a practicing specialist, whose career has encompassed working for two major universities, the U.S. Army Medical Corp and, more recently, private medical practice. The author, born and raised in Latin America, has had the opportunity to personally experience all of these changes and the resulting healthcare downgrade, and is able to provide an insider's view of the current state of affairs, together with the only potential solution to a process that continues to threaten the quality of american medicine for generations to come.
About the Author: I was born in a small town in the eastern part of the island of Cuba. Following the ascent to power of Fidel Castro in 1959, as many others did, we emigrated in the mid-1960s and eventually reached Venezuela, the country where I grew up. I expressed my inclination to become a physician at a very early age, and at the young age of 16, I left the house of my parents and embarked on an adventure that has become the center of most of my life. By the time I graduated from medical school, my best option was to seek postgraduate education in the United States. I completed my neurology postgraduate education in St. Louis University Medical Center, and remained there as a member of its faculty for a total of thirteen years. During this period, I joined the U.S. Army Reserve as a medical officer; this afforded me the opportunity to be in active duty during the Gulf War in 1991. The University of Alabama in Birmingham recruited me sometime later, and I remained in that institution for a total of eight years. Following the tragic accidental death of my boss, the political climate of the University became such that I had no choice but to leave, and I have been in private practice for the last nine years. I have dedicated the bulk of my practice, research and teaching to the field of cerebrovascular diseases (i.e. stroke). Then, around 1993, I decided to expand my horizon by venturing into the field of neurointervention. This is similar to the evolution of cardiology, which culminated in the development of interventional cardiology (i.e. the treatment of coronary insufficiency by placement of stents and such). In 1993, there were almost no interventional neurologists and it took several of us many years to get to the point where it is now a widely accepted subspecialty, with practitioners everywhere in the world. Then, when I was in my mid-40s, I went back to school and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. Learning about business sparked a personal interest in national economics, finance, and overall policy. I have a strong conservative political tendency, and an obsessive admiration for free markets and the Austrian school of economics. I consider myself a lowercase libertarian who abhors government intervention in our daily lives, especially medical practice. I admire Ayn Rand and her work, and I find the objectivist philosophy to suit me just fine.