1998
2009
Joan Hangarter bought a disability policy in 1990 to protect her should she ever become seriously ill. She dutifully paid her annual premiums for nearly a decade. But when she became disabled, she and her children found themselves homeless and bankrupt when her insurer--UnumProvident--stopped paying her benefits. With the help of attorneys Ray Bourhis and Alice Wolfson, Hangarter won a landmark $7.7 million jury verdict against Unum.
Through the compelling stories of ordinary people who have been driven to bankruptcy--or worse--when tragedy struck, Bourhis shows how the insurance industry runs roughshod over the very people it is paid to protect. He shows how the industry has become so insulated from accountability that neither lawsuits, punitive damage awards, federal court injunctions, newspaper headlines, nor television exposure can derail their determined efforts to turn a profit at any cost.
Bourhis, a national champion of policyholder rights, walks readers through both Joan Hangarter's heart-wrenching case and the stories of Susan McGregor, Stuart Gluck, John Tedesco, Laurie Hindiyeh, Eugene Molfino, Julie Guyton, Michael Baldwin, Margaret Santana, and numerous other claimants--real people with heart disease, AIDS, spinal injuries, brain damage, Parkinson's disease, and other disabilities whose benefits were cut off just when they needed them most. Bourhis shows how the world's largest disability carrier, UnumProvident, has relied on a host of shady practices--from surveillance to one-sided medical evaluations to policy re-interpretations-to target and terminate benefit payments.
Through these cautionary tales, he shines a spotlight on widespread bad faith double-dealing by insurance providers and details the key regulatory failures that enable these practices to continue unchecked.
2004
· A dramatic memoir by a Nobel Prize winner and medical pioneer
· Shows that the nuclear threat, which is still very much with us, can be successfully opposed by citizen action
· Analyzes what really drove the Cold War and what continues to drive nuclear proliferation today
“How close we came to extinction, and it is forgotten now.” So begins Nobel Prize-winner Bernard Lown’s story of his fight against the nuclear symptom of what he calls “the disease of militarism.” It is still active and highly contagious, as witnessed by events in Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, and all too many other places. And it can only be stopped, as this extraordinary memoir vividly demonstrates, by concerned citizens working together.
In 1981, brimming with anxiety about the escalating nuclear confrontation with the Russians, Lown launched a USA-USSR antinuclear movement with Soviet cardiologist Evgeni Chazov: The International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW). Over the next four years Lown and Chazov recruited more than 150,000 doctors worldwide to join their movement, held international conferences that included U. S. and Russian military leaders, met with numerous world political leaders, and appeared on television programs broadcast throughout the USSR and the U. S. In 1985, despite active opposition from the U. S. government and NATO, Lown and Chazov accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of IPPNW.
This dramatic story is told with a vibrancy of language that illuminates dramatic scenes such as Lown convincing King Hussein of Jordan to join the anti-nuclear struggle during a medical exam, the heart attack of a Russian journalist at an IPPNW press conference, and Lown’s face-to-face conversations with Gorbachev. Although this book is concerned with a potential clash of superpowers, Lown writes, “At the heart of these cascading events is a human narrative.”
“Historical amnesia is a prelude for repeated victimization,” Lown says. Prescription for Survival probes the past to help us understand what drove, and continues to drive, nuclear proliferation, and offers a blueprint showing how we can join together across national boundaries to end it.
This is a book about taking health care the last mile-sometimes literally-to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering.
Every three minutes, nearly 50 children under the age of five dies. In the same three minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills 655,000 people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for $1.41.
Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just can't get it to them. They are dying not because we can't solve a medical problem but because we can't solve a logistics problem.
In this profoundly important book, Eric Bing and Marc Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom-up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard-to-reach communities they serve. By building a new model that "scales down" to train and incentivize all kinds of health-care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on-site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top-down bureaucratic programs.
Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They describe the principles and practices involved in implementing it and explain how to apply it to overcome specific health challenges.
This is a book about taking health care the last mile-sometimes literally-to prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first-world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.
Every three minutes, nearly 50 children under the age of five dies. In the same three minutes, 2 mothers lose their lives in childbirth. Every year, malaria kills 655,000 people, despite the fact that it can be prevented with a mosquito net and treated for $1.41.
Sadly, this list goes on and on. Millions are dying from diseases that we can easily and inexpensively prevent, diagnose, and treat. Why? Because even though we know exactly what people need, we just cant get it to them. They are dying not because we can't solve a medical problem but because we cant solve a logistics problem.
In this profoundly important book, Eric Bing and Marc Epstein lay out a solution: a new kind of bottom-up health care that is delivered at the source. We need microclinics, micropharmacies, and microentrepreneurs located in the remote, hard-to-reach communities they serve. By building a new model that "scales down" to train and incentivize all kinds of health-care providers in their own villages and towns, we can create an army of on-site professionals who can prevent tragedy at a fraction of the cost of top-down bureaucratic programs.
Bing and Epstein have seen the model work, and they provide example after example of the extraordinary results it has achieved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. They describe the principles and practices involved in implementing it and explain how to apply it to overcome specific health challenges.
This is a book about taking health care the last milesometimes literallyto prevent widespread, unnecessary, and easily avoided death and suffering. Pharmacy on a Bicycle shows how the same forces of innovation and entrepreneurship that work in first-world business cultures can be unleashed to save the lives of millions.