Best Care Anywhere | Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours

Best Care Anywhere:
Why VA Health Care Is Better Than Yours

By Phillip Longman
With a foreword by Timothy Noah

Published by PoliPointPress
189 Pages
Publication Date 3/07
ISBN: 978-0-9778253-0-1
$14.95, soft cover

- Press Release

Buy This Book:

“Phillip Longman has uncovered the biggest, untold medical story of the last decade;
the highest quality, lowest cost health care in America is being produced not by the
private sector, but by a government agency, the VA. It’s a story that will fundamentally
alter the biggest medical issue of the coming decade: the drive for universal health care.”
—Paul Glastris, The Washington Monthly

“In this important book, Phillip Longman describes the turnaround of the VA
healthcare 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 policy
makers alike.”
—Dr. Elliott S. Fisher, Dartmouth Medical School

“Among the most important social policy books published in the last decade.
Longman’s evidence calls into question fundamental aspects of the neoliberal
worldview—that it’s deeply reported and stylishly presented is icing on the cake.
Buy this book.”
—Ezra Klein, The American Prospect

Phil Longman delivers a shocking message about America’s healthcare system. Despite its expense, our system fails to provide appropriate, evidence-based medicine for half the patients it treats. A proven solution has arrived: the long-maligned, reinvented Veterans Health Administration, which is now the highest quality provider in the United States.

Best Care Anywhere uses the VHA turnaround to illustrate deeper lessons for the U.S. health care system as a whole. The book concludes with a realistic “battle plan” to apply the lessons of the VHA turnaround to America’s massive health care sector, which now accounts for 14 percent of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product but lags other nations in health outcomes and effectiveness.

Phillip Longman, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, is the author of numerous articles and books on health care, demographics, and public policy. His most recent book, The Empty Cradle, was published by Basic Books in March 2004. The book examines how the rapid yet uneven fall in birth rates around the globe is affecting the evolution of culture and politics.

Mr. Longman is also the author of Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America (1987) and The Return of Thrift: How the Collapse of the Middle Class Welfare State Will Reawaken Values in America (1996). Mr. Longman’s work has appeared in such publications as the Atlantic, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Harvard Business Review, the New Republic, the New York Times Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Monthly, Washington Post, and the Wilson Quarterly.

He is a frequent public speaker, including addresses to the National War College, the Department of Health and Human Services, PopTech, and Fortune magazine’s annual “Brainstorm” conference. He is also frequently interviewed by both foreign and domestic media, including National Public Radio, the British Broadcasting Corporation, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Der Spiegel, and many others. Formerly a senior writer and deputy assistant managing editor at U.S. News & World Report, he has won numerous awards for his business and financial writing, including UCLA’s Gerald Loeb Award, and the top prize for investigative journalism from Investigative Reporters and Editors.