Posted at my blog:Title: Pricing LifeAuthor: Peter A. Ubel, MDPages: 183 paperbackSummary: I will start off saying this book is bound to be super contentious given the current political atmosphere around health care and what our country should do about it. This book focuses on the US health care system and talks about something that apparently a lot of people hate: health care rationing. He starts by defining a working definition for health care rationing, since it is not something agreed upon at all. He continues by making the argument that we are getting to the point in health care progress that we really will have to ration health care services if we want to afford reasonable health care for everyone as a nation. The idea is that every year more and more expensive new therapies come out for the big scary diseases and most of the time they are highly unlikely to actually help that much, so where should the line be drawn of what is covered by health care providers and what isn’t?I found the book quite approachable for a non-premed college graduate and interesting. It obviously is a very difficult issue, but Ubel explains his thoughts and suggestions very well and it’s something I’m glad health care professionals might start thinking about, since as a patient I had no idea how unnecessarily expensive normal procedures were and how unhelpful a lot of screenings are to do annually. If you are interested in this sort of thing, I definitely recommend it as an interesting and engaging read.More reviews at http://www.onstarshipsanddragonwings.com/
 - Peter Ubel)
