Anecdotes and real case studies ripped from the headlines about what doctors did which got them into trouble either with Medicare, HIPAA, The Office of Inspector General (OIG) or worse the FBI. The case studies are true stories of medical professionals: Some are about providers just like you trying to navigate the complex maze of the medical billing process. This guide will help you recognize the red flags and triggers so you can avoid a Medicare Audit. Learn about common problems that plague medical practices. Discover what your peers have done right and what they have done wrong. Avoid the costly billing mistakes and practice mismanagement showcased in Medical Billing Horror Stories. With the changes, challenges and uncertainties facing the Healthcare industry you cant afford to miss this information. If you submit even one claim for reimbursement this is a must read!

This guide explains how readers can protect themselves from medical overcharges, duplicate charges, hidden charges, and mischarges from hospitals, HMOs, physical therapists, labs, and doctor's offices. Readers are primed on the techniques of negotiation with insurance companies.

New York Times bestseller Business Book of the Year--Association of Business Journalists From the New York Times bestselling author comes an eye-opening, urgent look at America's broken health care system--and the people who are saving it--now with a new Afterword by the author. "A must-read for every American." --Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief, FORBES One in five Americans now has medical debt in collections and rising health care costs today threaten every small business in America. Dr. Makary, one of the nation's leading health care experts, travels across America and details why health care has become a bubble. Drawing from on-the-ground stories, his research, and his own experience, The Price We Pay paints a vivid picture of the business of medicine and its elusive money games in need of a serious shake-up. Dr. Makary shows how so much of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health and what you can do about it. Dr. Makary challenges the medical establishment to remember medicine's noble heritage of caring for people when they are vulnerable. The Price We Pay offers a road map for everyday Americans and business leaders to get a better deal on their health care, and profiles the disruptors who are innovating medical care. The movement to restore medicine to its mission, Makary argues, is alive and well--a mission that can rebuild the public trust and save our country from the crushing cost of health care.

"The best concise explanation of why the United States needs single-payer health care — and needs to widen the definition of health care itself."— The Washington Post Single payer healthcare is not complicated: the government pays for all care for all people. It’s cheaper than our current model, and most Americans (and their doctors) already want it. So what’s the deal with our current healthcare system, and why don’t we have something better? In Health Justice Now, Timothy Faust explains what single payer is, why we don’t yet have it, and how it can be won. He identifies the actors that have misled us for profit and political gain, dispels the myth that healthcare needs to be personally expensive, shows how we can smoothly transition to a new model, and reveals the slate of humane and progressive reforms that we can only achieve with single payer as the springboard. In this impassioned playbook, Faust inspires us to believe in a world where we could leave our job without losing healthcare for ourselves and our kids; where affordable housing is healthcare; and where social justice links arm-in-arm with health justice for us all.

In an emotional story that details one woman's struggle within a medical organization that was filled with massive illegal billing, her faith shines through. Healthcare Under Duress:An Inside look at the University of Washington Billing Scandal presents one woman's personal account and experience within a prestigious University Hospital (UWP). This case is unique, representing the issuance of the largest fine ever given to a medical teaching institution within the United States for billing fraud. For years, Swannee Rivers maintained hope of one day seeing justice served. In 2000 the FBI arrived, giving her that opportunity.

A visionary investigation that will change the way we think about health care: how and why it is failing, why expanding coverage will actually make things worse, and how our health care can be transformed into a transparent, affordable, successful system. In 2007, David Goldhill’s father died from infections acquired in a hospital, one of more than two hundred thousand avoidable deaths per year caused by medical error. The bill was enormous—and Medicare paid it. These circumstances left Goldhill angry and determined to understand how world-class technology and personnel could coexist with such carelessness—and how a business that failed so miserably could be paid in full. Catastrophic Care is the eye-opening result. Blending personal anecdotes and extensive research, Goldhill presents us with cogent, biting analysis that challenges the basic preconceptions that have shaped our thinking for decades. Contrasting the Island of health care with the Mainland of our economy, he demonstrates that high costs, excess medicine, terrible service, and medical error are the inevitable consequences of our insurance-based system. He explains why policy efforts to fix these problems have invariably produced perverse results, and how the new Affordable Care Act is more likely to deepen than to solve these issues. Goldhill steps outside the incremental and wonkish debates to question the conventional wisdom blinding us to more fundamental issues. He proposes a comprehensive new way, where the customer (the patient) is first—a system focused on health and maintaining it, a system strong and vibrant enough for our future. If you think health care is interesting only to institutes and politicians, think again: Catastrophic Care is surprising, engaging, and brimming with insights born of questions nobody has thought to ask. Above all it is a book of new ideas that can transform the way we understand a subject we often take for granted.

Dr. Doug Peredniareveals how government and insurance company-created complexity is tearing apart the U.S. healthcare system and presents a new model for healthcare reform that will actually work. Leading physician, healthcare expert, and entrepreneur Perednia identifies specific inefficiencies and worthless administrative overhead that is making healthcare inaccessible or unaffordable for millions, driving providers from practice, and adding over half a trillion dollars annually to healthcare spending. Next, he shows how to design a far simpler system: one that delivers care to everyone by drawing on the best of both market efficiency and public "universality." Recent "health care reform" involved 2,000+ pages of complex, special interest-friendly legislation--including 168 new federal committees, program cuts, and higher taxpayer costs. Perednia offers a better way: a logical, comprehensive, and non-partisan and apolitical approach that gives providers and their patients more medical and financial security, enhances competition, would save some $570 billion annually--and still gives individual patients real freedom. This plan isn't wishful thinking: Overhauling America’s Healthcare Machine backs it up with detailed logic and objective calculations. Even after the recent endless debate about healthcare, the system is still broken--and unless it's fixed, it will break us all. Perednia shows how to finally fix it: once and for all.

The most fatal virus known to science, rabies-a disease that spreads avidly from animals to humans-kills nearly one hundred percent of its victims once the infection takes root in the brain. In this critically acclaimed exploration, journalist Bill Wasik and veterinarian Monica Murphy chart four thousand years of the history, science, and cultural mythology of rabies. From Greek myths to zombie flicks, from the laboratory heroics of Louis Pasteur to the contemporary search for a lifesaving treatment, Rabid is a fresh and often wildly entertaining look at one of humankind's oldest and most fearsome foes. "A searing narrative." -The New York Times "In this keen and exceptionally well-written book, rife with surprises, narrative suspense and a steady flow of expansive insights, 'the world's most diabolical virus' conquers the unsuspecting reader's imaginative nervous system. . . . A smart, unsettling, and strangely stirring piece of work." -San Francisco Chronicle "Fascinating. . . . Wasik and Murphy chronicle more than two millennia of myths and discoveries about rabies and the animals that transmit it, including dogs, bats and raccoons." -The Wall Street Journal

Includes bibliographical references (p. 228-230).

A blueprint for comprehensive, science-based health care system reform. Financial and political pressures on our health care system have negatively impacted individual care and the health system as a whole, an issue that has only become more acute because of the COVID-19 pandemic. In Building a Unified American Health Care System, Gilead I Lancaster, MD, lays out a blueprint for comprehensive health care reform, proposing a unified system run by health care professionals—not politicians or commercial health insurance companies—that offers universal coverage and access. Lancaster compares the current arguments for single payer versus commercial health insurance systems with arguments in the early 1900s for a central bank versus regional commercial banks. He then introduces a novel solution: the establishment of a National Medical Board similar to the Federal Reserve System that helped fix the American banking system over a century ago. Along with other innovations, a plan co-created by Lancaster dubbed EMBRACE (Expanding Medical and Behavioral Resources with Access to Care for Everyone) would involve creating a modern, evidence-based health care system, one offering universal coverage for basic needs while allowing for commercial insurance participation. Emphasizing the importance of separating health care from governmental and commercial pressures and incentives, Lancaster explains the need for comprehensive—rather than incremental—reform of the American health care system.