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A Return to Healing: Radical Health Care Reform and the Future of Medicine |  | Authors: M.D. Len Saputo, Byron Belitsos
Publisher: Origin Press
Category: Book
List Price: $21.95
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as of 11/23/2009 15:16 MST details
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 199368
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.1
ISBN: 1579830528
Dewey Decimal Number: 362
EAN: 9781579830526
ASIN: 1579830528
Publication Date: September 19, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
For several decades, a rapidly emerging new medical paradigm has supported a renaissance in our understanding of lifelong wellness. In this timely book, Dr. Saputo presents the inspiring story of this new medicine, and reveals how it can unlock the door to a health care system that works for all Americans. Corporatized medicine only gets to work once disease occurs. Integrative medicine, on the other hand, prioritizes prevention and non-invasive treatments as the first line of defense, and blends the best-evidenced solutions from both mainstream and alternative healing modalities. Conventional medicine's obsession with profitably treating symptoms drives up the cost of health care. And with nearly half of us lacking access to adequate health insurance, how do we deliver care to every American? Saputo and cowriter Byron Belitsos argue that single-payer national health insurance is a necessary but insufficient solution. A genuine return to healing requires that we combine regulatory reform with support for a transformed medical paradigm. Dr. Saputo's novel prescription for change draws from his front-line work as a cofounder of the Health Medicine movement and originator of one of America s first integrative medical clinics. Studded with essential wisdom for healthy living and with compelling stories drawn from his forty years of practice, A Return to Healing is rich with the latest research in both biomedical science and health care policy and is a superb guide to the future of medicine.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
A Return to Healing: The Future of Medicine November 19, 2009
Bruce Wapen (Foster City, CA)
Loved the book: informative, thought provoking, and courageous. The health care reforms that are being proposed in Congress are not going to get us where we need to go. This book shows the way. Bruce Wapen, MD
A fine and recommended read September 8, 2009
Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA)
Something has got to change about American health care, and many people just don't know what. "A Return to Healing: Radical Health Care Reform and the Future of Medicine" is a discussion of the current health care crisis and how to go about finding a solution. With some unique and cutting edge ideas, author Len Saputo offers readers much food for thought in what is really important in medicine, and what could cut costs and lead to healthier America. Another fresh and original perspective on the health care debate, "A Return to Healing" is a fine and recommended read.
This book will inspire you!! September 1, 2009
Francesco Garripoli
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I rarely comment on books I read. For one thing, there are just way too many out there, and for another, I'm very selective and maybe a bit over-critical. As an author of two books, I do appreciate the effort that it takes to bring a book to life. I am working on my third at the moment and I have been writing and researching it for nearly a year! A dear friend of mine, Len Saputo, has co-authored several books over his 40 year career as an Internist. During that time he has developed an amazing radio program with his wife Vicki Saputo, R.N., that broadcasts weekly in the San Francisco area. He has created and evolved the Health Medicine Forum over these years into an awesome "town meeting" of sorts that brings together experts in the medical and health-related fields and addresses major issues at the grassroots level.
All this experience - and more - makes this stellar physician the ideal person to author the new book, "A Return to Healing." Len has the right combination of wisdom, experience, and heart to take on the American health care system like no one else can. At a time when the Obama administration is presenting controversial health care reform,"A Return to Healing" is more poignant than ever. The fact is, Dr. Saputo has been working on this book for years - so it is no simple response to current events. This book not only looks at the challenging health care landscape in the U.S. today, but it provides an in-depth look at what brought America to this condition... and most importantly, what is required for us to move to a new level of caring for ourselves and those in need.
Len is no "typical" physician; he is amongst the small percent who really understands the worlds of East and West, of allopathic and complementary medicine, and of treatment and healing. If you are a layperson confused by what you are hearing about medical care and the pharmaceutical companies these days, this book will open your eyes to the concept of "health medicine." If you are a health care practitioner, reading Len's work with inspire you to your potential.
An Immensely Important Book! August 14, 2009
Miriam Knight (Portland, OR, USA)
This is an immensely important book at this time of national debate on the future of health care in America.
While Dr. Saputo may be rushing into a political melee where even angels fear to tread, he is certainly no fool. An internal medicine practitioner for forty years, he began to see another side of medicine when medical science failed his wife, condemning her to a downward spiral of drugs and steroids. In desperation, they began to research and employ alternative therapies, and she was eventually able to regain her health.
When Dr Saputo shared his results with his medical colleagues, their reactions ranged from indifference to hostility. This was a major wake-up call to someone who had dedicated himself to being a healer. How could these doctors turn their collective backs on treatments that could relieve suffering? They had all sworn the Hippocratic Oath, "First do no harm...", yet they closed their minds to a promising treatment protocol, just because it was not part of conventional medical practice. Dr. Saputo embarked on a mission to put the wellness of his patients ahead of the medical orthodoxy of the system and offer them the best healing practices from both conventional and alternative medicine.
In order to do that he had to create a new model of "health care" radically different from the "disease care" practiced today. To do so he faced the censure of his colleagues, the state medical board and even legal challenges. All he wanted to do was to offer his patients a choice regarding their own health care. (Sound familiar?)
The first part of the book cites chapter and verse about the incestuous relationship between the drug companies and doctors, researchers and politicians; it describes how hospitals and health insurance companies have morphed from service industries to profit-driven corporations, and all of them together have created the failed system we have today. He quotes one hair-raising fact after another from sources like respected medical journals, the Congressional Record, the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health:
o Medical mistakes are the leading cause of death in US
o No more than 15% of medical interventions are supported by reliable scientific evidence,
o The FDA approved bad drugs like Vioxx and Lupron, that cost tens of thousands of lives, but 90 studies that showed that vitamin D from sunshine reduces cancer risk by 50% have been suppressed
o Half of all bankruptcies in America are due to medical bills
o By 2017, $1 out of every $5 spent, will be on health care
o The US spends more money per capita than anyone, but is #37 in health outcomes in the world, just above Slovenia and Cuba
Dr. Saputo has created a group practice through considerable trial and error that offers a fascinating model that could revolutionize health outcomes, patient and doctor satisfaction, and still be more economical than the current system. He calls it "Integral Health Care", adapting the philosophy of Ken Wilber. Depending on the needs of his patients, Dr. Saputo wants to shift the priorities from disease management focused on drugs, expensive diagnostics and surgery, to health management, starting with prevention and health education, then the greater use of gentler alternatives like herbs, chiropractic, acupuncture and guided imagery, with drugs and surgery as options of last resort.
His practice has pioneered the use of Healing Circles that include the patient, his/her health champion (the lead practitioner) and a panel of other complementary practitioners relevant to the particular case. Both patient and doctor satisfaction have soared with this approach. The problem is that the insurance companies will not cover much of it, even though it is cheaper and more cost effective, so this kind of enlightened health care is only available to those who pay out of pocket or pro bono.
Dr. Saputo thinks that a single payer insurance system would be a big step forward. The present system is untenable. It is as bad for patients and doctors as it is for the economy and the national deficit. It is time for an informed public to pressure the politicians, who seem to be paralyzed by the fear of losing campaign funding from Big Pharma and the rest of the medical-industrial complex.
This book needs to be read by every politician, medical practitioner and citizen. It is a manifesto for what health care should be, and what it can be with honest and intelligent reform.
Business model poisons good doctoring... August 10, 2009
Dr. Roger Kotila (Novato, CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A Return to Healing exposes what many of us in the healing professions have known for a long time: The business model not only doesn't work in medicine, it corrupts it. Dr. Len Saputo, along with co-author Byron Belitsos, give the reader a strikingly clear picture of how profit-driven medicine has gone terribly wrong -- poisoning good doctoring to near death. The good news? This book includes a refreshing antidote guiding us in a philosophical and principled direction by which a genuine healing profession can become the new standard. This is an important book for both professionals and for laypersons who share the belief that the primary mission of medicine should be to help, not hurt the patient -- and who want to understand the changes recommended in establishing a new standard for care.
Dr. Roger Kotila, clinical psychologist
Showing reviews 1-5 of 11
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