Radical surgery

Joseph A. Califano, Jr., was present at the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. As the nation's most provocative and effective Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, he took on the tobacco industry and alerted the nation to rising health care costs. He sees health reform as a perpetual process continuing into the next century, one too important to leave to politicians, physicians, providers, and policy wonks because we patients and taxpayers have the greatest personal stake in the outcome.

Califano urges bold action to save the best of American medicine, nourish its genius, contain its costs, and democratize its miracle cures. He warns that the obsession of the nation's politicians with raising campaign money and their fetish with financing and delivering sick care will continue to push up costs and limit the number of Americans with access to care. Speaking with uncommon candor and lively anecdotes, he shows why successful reform must reshape not just the treatment of illness and injury, but also where the nation invests its research dollars and how much it devotes to prevention.