Getting The Right Price for Your Healthcare. The cost of healthcare is a crisis. It’s a major contributing factor in about 60 percent of individual bankruptcies, despite 75 percent of these people having health insurance. But it’s also bankrupting corporations, retirement funds, and the nation as a whole as it nears 20 percent of our GDP and eats more and more of our collective lunch.
Having been trained at the prestigious Guys Hospital in London and practiced primary care in the US for nearly 45 years, Patrick Neustatter, MD, has a worldly overview of healthcare costs, how patients can make the best decisions to keep prices low, and how to fight the forces that drive up the bill.
“The cost per capita is twice that of equivalent industrialized countries, but it’s ranked almost last in quality. Medicines cost nearly double in the U.S and the injury and death rate from medical errors is at epidemic proportions,” Dr. Neustatter explains.
He continues, “I consider myself doubly qualified to advise you on reducing your personal healthcare costs. I’m a doctor and therefore have firsthand experience with how these bills come about. But I’m also a practiced cheapskate, as my kids will readily attest, though I’ve always tried to impress on them that ‘parsimonious’ is the preferred term.”
Ready to dive into the issues and solutions around healthcare costs, Dr. Neustatter has immediate availability around the release of his new book, Managing Your Doctor: The Smart Patient’s Guide to Getting Effective, Affordable Healthcare to discuss the following:
How, and when, to say No to your Doctor
Can patients haggle with their Healthcare providers?
The financial impact of end of life care
What patients can do without a doctor: Self-help, public labs, self-monitoring, alternative therapists, assembling a “medical kit” and more
Safe ways to reduce cost without compromising your health
A fifth generation physician, Dr. Patrick Neustatter was born in England and educated at prestigious Guy’s Hospital in London. He worked on four continents before moving to the U.S. in 1982, completing residency in family practice at SUNY at Stony Brook. He has spent the vast majority of his 45 years of practice “in the trenches” of primary care. Since retiring from full time practice in Stafford, Virginia, he has become the volunteer medical director of the Lloyd Moss Free Clinic, writes regular medical columns for two local newspapers, and has worked on the concept of what he calls ‘medical emancipation’ to help patients get effective, affordable healthcare. Dr. Neustatter and his family live outside of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Learn more about Dr. Neustatter at www.managingyourdoctor.com.
