The Cure That Works: How to Have the World's Best Health Care -- at a Quarter of the Price

by Sean Masaki Flynn

What’s the Most Important Fact About the Heathcare Crisis? That We Already Know the Cure! 

Whole Foods Markets, the State of Indiana, and innovators around the world have used forgotten American ideas to slash healthcare costs by 75 percent while simultaneously delivering true universal access, coverage for preexisting conditions, and an ironclad safety net. 

Economics for Dummies author Sean Flynn explains that simple things—like price tags, competition, and plentiful health savings contributions—crush costs while granting everyone equal access to the world’s best healthcare services.  

Genres: Nonfiction, Economics, Health

256 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 18, 2019

Reviews

[Baylen · Rating 5 out of 5]

A detailed review on how to translate ideas from Singapores health care system to the US. Easy to read overview which all politicians should consider reading. However, to think some of the ideas in the text will translate smoothly over to the US health system is a bit of a reach.

[Natasha Kar · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read this for a class, so I only read the parts I was assigned. After reading T. R. Reid’s “Healing of America,” this one seemed a little more biased and too idealistic in my opinion. There definitely are a lot of great things we can learn from Singapore’s system, but to say it is the only good option to fix all our healthcare problems is incredibly one-sided. The author gives off a heavy “socially liberal, financially conservative” type of vibe. He reminds me of one of those guys loves to complain about all of America’s problems, but they refuse to wrap their heads around the fact that most of these problems are caused by unregulated, late-stage capitalism (wow imagine that). It was hard to take any of his solutions seriously, because he didn’t once acknowledge that the problems that we have are systemic and he refused to call them for they really are (elitism, inequality, bigotry, etc). Instead of acknowledging that these characteristics are embedded into our country and that our system relies on creating hierarchies and keeping certain groups of people oppressed, he continually implies that inaccessibility of healthcare is caused by poor people being irresponsible with their money. Kinda tired of seeing rich American economists take the hyper-individualist approach of suggesting that the only way to fix inequality in this country is for poor people to just “do capitalism better.”

[April Gustafson Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone in America should read this book. Especially all of the congressman and Senators. I recently read this one and another book on the same topic, _The Price We Pay: what broke American healthcare and how to fix it_, and I thought _The Cure That Works_ was a much better book. Much more appealing to me anyway. Both of them have lots of valuable things to say (the other book mentions that there is lots of overuse, including mentioning a statistic that possibly 30% of knee replacements performed in the USA are unnecessary. I had a knee replacement last year and it is my opinion that any doctor who knowingly performs a knee replacement surgery that is unnecessary should be jailed for committing a violent crime), but this one is like a template for what could be. With a large emphasis on inviting the power of market forces to play on quality, quantity, and pricing of healthcare services. And giving a real world example of a country where these things are already being done. As an article I read recently that reviews this book points out, the country of Singapore is both in population and geographical size comparable to just one of the United States, so the author of the article questioned whether it might be more appropriate for individual states to take actions like Singapore. I prefer the idea of changing our whole healthcare economy to match what Singapore has going.

[Jay Yeo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book explores both the healthcare and insurance systems in the US and Singapore, and how Singapore's system is able to implement incentives that drive a virtuous cycle of prudence, low prices, appropriate demand and burden and so on, as compared to perverse incentives driving healthcare costs up in the US. It does somewhat gloss over some realities and puts Singapore on too high a pedestal in my own lived experience, however the least of evils I suppose can still be called the best.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so good! Literally decided to pursue a Master's based off this book! This was so straightforward and informative, and I learned so much about Singaporean healthcare. If you are looking to expand your perspective on healthcare, this is a great read!

[Ensen Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sean did a good job of sharing an alternative to the catastrophe that is the American healthcare system. So often problems are framed as a choice between two options as if nothing else is possible. Sean illustrates that not only is something different possible, but it already exists and is spectacularly successful.

[Glenn Proven · Rating 4 out of 5]

He writes with clarity and enthusiasm. He states the facts for his arguments and states when an argument is his opinion. Basically there is a near universal healthcare the U.S. can adapt for lower costs now and has proven itself in Singapore.

Sold me.

I wanna buy this for family and friends so we can discuss it. And get this movement rolling.