Get What’s Yours for Health Care

How to Get the Best Care at the Right Price

GWY for Health Care provides hundreds of concrete steps consumers can and should take to get better access to care, find the highest-quality doctors and care facilities, and learn how to pay less for better care.

The book includes research-based advice on how to take care of yourself and your family before care is required and how to assemble your own personal and professional health care teams. For the 90 percent of Americans who are covered by some form of health insurance, the book provides detailed help in understanding how to use health insurance, including how to talk to your insurer, how to avoid rejected claims, and how to fight back against adverse coverage decisions.

Throughout, it shares the stories of innovative businesses and entrepreneurs who are already finding better and cheaper ways to provide health care. It also shares the stories of courageous health care heroes who explain how they refused to settle for unacceptable care and high prices.

Contents:

PART ONE: HEALTH INSURANCE BASICS

  1. Game On
  2. Health Insurance: Friend and Foe

Heroes I The Health Navigator—Brian Lehrschall

  1. Employers Get to Work on Health Care
  2. The Affordable Care Act and Other Health Plans

Heroes II The Insurance Claims Expert—Marsha Meytlis

  1. Medicare Coverage, Costs, and Concerns
  2. Medicaid: A Program Everyone May Need

PART TWO: YOUR HEALTH CARE TEAM

Heroes III The Letter Writer—Julie Greenwood

  1. Your Personal Health Plan
  2. Your Personal Care Team

Heroes IV The Social Media Maven—Julie Croner

  1. Your Professional Care Team
  2. What Quality Looks Like

Heroes V The Patient Advocate—Karen Moore

PART THREE: NEW HEALTH CARE CHOICES

  1. Unneeded and Misdiagnosed Care (excerpted in Newsweek)
  2. When You’re in Control, and When You’re Not

Heroes VI The Warrior Mother—Cynthia Buness

  1. Shopping for Health Care
  2. Getting and Paying for Drugs

Heroes VII The Warrior Daughter—Areta Buness

  1. How To Fight Back
  2. When Consumers Make the Call

Afterword: Through the Pandemic Looking Glass

Notes:

The book’s extensive Internet links to medical research and other sources are duplicated here.

Countless people are proving that consumers can beat the system, that superior care at reasonable prices is possible, and that we don’t have to accept the status quo. They are a different breed of health care hero than the caregivers who manned the front lines during the heights of the pandemic. But they are heroes nonetheless. . . . These heroes shop for the best deal and pore over health quality ratings. They appeal rejections of their insurance claims. They fight the government about which treatments and drugs are approved and the rules for how insurers help pay for them. They don’t accept defeat or walk away—they speak up; they kick and scratch; they sue! Their stories illustrate an evolving movement involving thousands of organizations and millions of engaged patients and consumers. View them not as the end of the transformation story. There will be more heroes and disrupters appearing each day.

— Get What’s Yours for Health Care

What the Experts Say:

“Arms consumers as never before with the tools we need to win our health care battles”
–Jane Bryant Quinn, author of How To Make Your Money Last: The Indispensable Retirement Guide

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