A Model for Health-Care Reform

Phillip Longman tells the amazing story of the turnaround of the Department of Veterans Affairs health-care system from a dysfunctional, scandal-prone bureaucracy into the benchmark for high-quality medicine in the United States. Best Care Anywhere shows that vast swaths of what we think we know about health, health care, and medical economics are just plain wrong. And the book demonstrates how this extraordinarily cost-effective model, which has proven to be highly popular with veterans, can be made available to everyone. New to this edition is an analysis of how the shortcomings of both so-called Obamacare and Republican plans to privatize Medicare reinforce the need for applying the lessons of the VA. Also included are completely updated statistics and research, as well as examples of how the private sector is already beginning to learn from the VA’s example.

“This important book describes the turnaround of the VA health-care system—now widely recognized as leading the nation in terms of both quality and costs—and offers insights that will be useful to patients and policymakers alike.”
—Elliot S. Fisher, MD, Professor of Medicine and Professor of Community and Family Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School

“The improvement of the VA health-care system in the past decade is one of the most impressive stories of large-scale change—and the leadership thereof—in modern times. Students of quality improvement will find lesson after lesson in this important case study.”
—Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, Professor, Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Public Health, and former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

“Phillip Longman has uncovered the biggest untold medical story of the last decade.”
—Paul Glastris, Editor in Chief, Washington Monthly

“Longman’s book is a beacon of hope.”
—Theodore Marmor, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Management and Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Yale University