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The Society
The desire to write a thriller dealing with managed care actually sprang
from my medical job (see www.physicianhealth.org). My clients are
Massachusetts physicians who have encountered difficulty with physical
illness, mental illness, substance abuse, anger management, and other
behavioral problems. While the overwhelming paperwork and practice
restrictions of managed care did not cause their problems, they certainly
added to them. There is so much unhappiness, exhaustion, and
disillusionment in the medical profession right now that I really felt I
had to write about it. Many doctors are working twice the hours they once
did just to keep their incomes from plummeting. This at a time when
$100,000 or more in medical school loan debt is the norm.
As an ER doc, I only had to deal with issues of record keeping (if I didn't
write down "rectal negative," as far as the insurance companies were
concerned, I didn't do one), and not finances (I was salaried by the hour).
In private practices, the paperwork demands are gargantuan and much work
goes unpaid for. Currently, many physicians are fighting back, organizing
to design and advocate for some sort of national health insurance that will
cover everyone (tens of millions are currently uncovered) and relieve
doctors of the crushing burden of paperwork. Enter the Hippocrates Society.
The Society took me two years to create and write, but I am very pleased
with the result. It is one thing to choose an issue to write about such as
euthanasia, infertility, pharmaceutical company excesses, academic fraud,
holistic healing, and the like. It's another to deal with those issues in
the context of a novel of suspense. I think you'll have a great time
reading The Society, and hopefully get a feeling for how your caregivers
and their patients have been affected by managed care.
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Jacket copy from The Society:
At the headquarters of Boston's Eastern Quality Health, the wealthy and
powerful CEO is brutally murdered. She is not the first to die - nor the
last. A vicious serial killer is on the loose and the victims have one
thing in common: they are all high-profile executives in the managed care
industry.
Dr. Will Grant is an overworked and highly dedicated surgeon. He has
experienced firsthand the outrages of a system that cares more about the
bottom line than the life and death issues of patients. As a member of the
Hippocrates Society, Will seeks to reclaim the profession of medicine from
the hundreds of companies now profiting wildly from controlling the
decisions affecting the delivery of care. But the doctor's determination
has attracted a dangerous zealot, who will stop at nothing to make Will his
ally. Soon, Will is a both suspect and victim, a pawn in a deadly endgame.
Then, in one horrible moment, his professional and personal worlds are
destroyed and his very life placed in peril.
Rookie detective Patty Moriarity is in danger of being removed from her
first big case-the managed care killings. To save her career, she has no
choice but to risk trusting Will, knowing he may well be the killer she is
hunting. Together, they have little to go on other than the knowledge that
the assassin is vengeful, cunning and ruthlessŠand may not be working
alone. Random letters of the alphabet have been found beside each victim.
The emerging message must be deciphered if the killings are to be stopped.
And Will and Patty may well be the next victims.
read more about The Society at:
RandomHouse.com/bantamdell
buy The Society at:
Amazon.com
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