CHAPTER TWO The Road Taken: Flexner’s Legacy in the Modern World

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents vii
3. Preface xi
4. Acknowledgments xiii
5. Introduction 1
6. PART ONE The Philosophy of Flexnerian Medical Care
7. CHAPTER ONE Born from the Womb of Eugenics 23
8. CHAPTER TWO The Road Taken: Flexner’s Legacy in the Modern World 36
9. CHAPTER THREE Why So Much Medical Science Is Not Reliable 47
10. CHAPTER FOUR Why Patients (and Doctors) Are Enticed by Flexnerian Logic 58
11. CHAPTER FIVE Most of What We Offer Patients Is No Better Than a Pebble 68
12. CHAPTER SIX Turning Pebbles into Boulders: How We Exaggerate the Benefits of What We Do 78
13. CHAPTER SEVEN Numerical Epidemics 86
14. CHAPTER EIGHT The Pitfalls of Screening for Diseases You Might Have 104
15. CHAPTER NINE When Science Becomes Dogma 120
16. CHAPTER TEN There’s an App for That! 130
17. CHAPTER ELEVEN Whatever Happened to Common Sense? 142
18. CHAPTER TWELVE The Drug Epidemic (It’s Not What You Think) 155
19. CHAPTER THIRTEEN Flexner and the Care of the Elderly 163
20. CHAPTER FOURTEEN Shared Decision-Making in a Flexnerian World 174
21. PART TWO The Cogs of the Flexnerian Medical-Industrial Complex
22. CHAPTER FIFTEEN The Foundations of Our Health Care Infrastructure 185
23. CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Financial Ramifications of Our Medical-Industrial Complex 192
24. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN Our Medical Education Quandary 206
25. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN The Dangers of Flexnerian Overspecialization in Medical Care 220
26. CHAPTER NINETEEN US Insurance Companies: Bankrupting Our Nation One Sickness at a Time 233
27. CHAPTER TWENTY The Power and the Influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry 246
28. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE In Medical Societies We Trust 261
29. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Metric Mess of the Health Care System 273
30. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE Hospitals: The Epicenter of Patient Care 282
31. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Case for Primary Care 293
32. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE An Overlooked Legacy: The Impact of Flexner on Racial Divisions in Health Care 301
33. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Why We Are So Unhealthy and What We Can Do about It 313
34. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN The Path Forward 319
35. Notes 331
36. Books We Used 361
37. Index 363