Despite more than a decade of change, the U.S. health care delivery system is still in the early stages of its transformation into a truly effective, cost efficient and compassionate system. In Healthcare.com: RX for Reform, Dr. David Friend, trained in both medicine and business, delineates the symptoms of our ailing healthcare system and offers a vision for the future.

Even with the enormous turmoil our health care system has undergone - from the proliferation managed care to the closing of hospitals - large numbers of people continue to receive sub-optimal care. The author discusses several symptoms including:
· increasing costs
· uncertain quality of care
· eroding trust in health care vendors
· increasing prospect of shareholder liability
· declining access to providers
· unclear impact on employee productivity

It is time to discard the old, traditional way of thinking about healthcare and take a fresh look at its issues and challenges. To tackle these challenges we must strike a balance between the seemingly dissimilar disciplines of economics, medicine, technology, and politics. Dr. Friend proposes that we tear down the brick and mortar delivery model and replace it with a Virtual Health Care System.

This new model changes the roles of everyone involved in the healthcare system, from the patient to the healthcare provider. It utilizes technology to redesign health care so that it can be delivered with higher quality and greater efficiency. Healthcare.com: RX for Reform examines the actions necessary for the evolution of our current system into a Virtual Health Care System.

Features

Despite more than a decade of change, the U.S. health care delivery system is still in the early stages of its transformation into a truly effective, cost efficient and compassionate system. In Healthcare.com: RX for Reform, Dr. David Friend, trained in both medicine and business, delineates the symptoms of our ailing healthcare system and offers a vision for the future. Even with the enormous turmoil our health care system has undergone - from the proliferation managed care to the closing of hospitals - large numbers of people continue to receive sub-optimal care. The author discusses several symptoms including: increasing costs uncertain quality of care eroding trust in health care vendors increasing prospect of shareholder liability declining access to providers unclear impact on employee productivity It is time to discard the old, traditional way of thinking about healthcare and take a fresh look at its issues and challenges. To tackle these challenges we must strike a balance between the seemingly dissimilar disciplines of economics, medicine, technology, and politics. Dr. Friend proposes that we tear down the brick and mortar delivery model and replace it with a Virtual Health Care System. This new model changes the roles of everyone involved in the healthcare system, from the patient to the healthcare provider. It utilizes technology to redesign health care so that it can be delivered with higher quality and greater efficiency. Healthcare.com: RX for Reform examines the actions necessary for the evolution of our current system into a Virtual Health Care System. Features

This major work presents a remarkable sequence of photo-stories from pioneering photo agency VII, documenting world history as we have experienced it since the end of the Cold War. The 11 extraordinarily talented photographers who make up this agency work at the cutting edge of digital photojournalism, committed to recording social and cultural change as it happens around the world.
"Questions Without Answers" is an ambitious book featuring a strikingly broad selection of photo stories. Photos documenting Barack Obama giving a speech on Afghanistan to American troops sit alongside a collection of portraits featuring famous cultural figures such as David Bowie and Bernardo Bertolucci. We move from an exploration of the spread and impact of AIDS in Asia to dispatches from the current economic crisis and its effect on those working in finance. The crucial work done by VII in documenting conflict - environmental, social and political, both violent and non-violent - is also represented, including stories from the war in Iraq, the crisis in Darfur and the terrible events of 9/11.
With an introduction by the eminent David Friend, "Vanity Fair"'s editor of creative development and the former director of photography of "Life" magazine, this book is an important, moving and compelling record of the world we live in.

THE NAUGHTY NINETIES: The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed age when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality TV, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture. In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend--an editor at Vanity Fair--combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade's signal personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Alan Cumming to Joan Rivers, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams. THE NAUGHTY NINETIES also uncovers unsung sexual pioneers, from the enterprising sisters who dreamed up the Brazilian bikini wax to the scientists who, quite by accident, discovered Viagra--and dozens more.