Flatlined lifts the veil of secrecy on twenty-first century health care and delves into the realities of good people caught in a bad medical system. Dr. Guy L. Clifton, a practitioner as well as a policy advocate, reveals first-hand accounts of needless tragedy, such as the young man who died after a car wreck for lack of a bed in a qualified hospital and the surgeon who was dejected by the scarcity of resources needed to enable him to perform heart surgery on an uninsured man.

Arguing that a lack of coordinated care and quality medical practice benchmarks result in high levels of redundancy and ineffectiveness, Clifton proposes that the key to reducing health care costs, improving quality, and financially protecting the uninsured, is to reduce wastefulness, and offers a solution for achieving success.

Flatlined sounds the warning call: By 2018 Medicare and Medicaid will consume about one-third of the federal budget. American businesses now pay three times as much of their payroll for health care as global competitors, expected to worsen as health care grows at twice the rate of the U.S. economy. Based on his years of experience in policy and medicine, Clifton offers an attainable solution through the development of an American Medical Quality System.

Guy L. Clifton, M.D. is a neurosurgeon, clinical investigator, administrator, and health policy advocate. He is the Runnells Distinguished Professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and has been frequently included in Best Doctors of America. A 2006–2007 Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, he is now devoting himself full-time to health policy reform.

"In this insider's polemic, neurosurgeon and clinical investigator Clifton warns that the U.S. health-care system is dying on the table. An eye-opening, sausage-maker's perspective on contemporary medicine, Clifton's thorough text deserves the attention of policy makers, health professionials, and anyone regularly shuffled (or shoved) through the maze of U.S. health care."

"This well-researched volume offers well-argued suggestions, and is intentionally accessible to the general public who, the author believes, much be enlisted in the campaign for change. Clifton's model is an interesting middle road between a nationalized and a privatized system. Recommended."

"This book testifies to the author's mastery of complex data in economics as well as medicine. A politically savvy and psychologically astute analyst, he sums up dozens of studies on the current crisis, illustrated with warm-hearted stories. His book is a major resource for those involved with healthcare reform and, for all concerned, a powerfully good read."

"Guy Clifton [is] a distinguished Texan neurosurgeon who spent a year as a Health Policy Fellow in the US Congress to develop the ideas he presents in this enlightening book, which I think is by far the best of its kind in recent memory. Clifton tells us that physicians need to have a financial incentive for practising efficient medicine. The new administration would do well to read this book, if it is, indeed, committed to intelligent health-care reform."

"Flatlined is a remarkable inside look at the embarrassingly flawed American health care delivery system. Dr. Clifton uses rich language to depicts in crisp, accurate detail the challenges and shortfalls of today's system. He willingly talks about 'the dead elephant in the room'—the issues that are often skirted, ignored, or hidden behind pretty words—as he marches toward a proposed solution for the nation. A must-read for policy makers and health care leaders."

"Dr. Guy Clifton lays out the problems in our health care system with extraordinary clarity and compassion, and he offers workable solutions. This book should be required reading for anybody who thinks health care needs fixing."

"Dr. Clifton tells a disturbing, too-often accurate story about our fragmented health care system and the realities Americans face as they struggle to work with a 1950s approach to providing medical services while living in a twenty-first century world. This disconnect creates serious problems for patients and providers alike. Flatlined offers smart solutions for the future of health care."

"In this important book, Dr. Guy Clifton, armed with facts and an extraordinary vision, accomplishes the impossible task of uniting medical and political territorial foes into a 'Save Our Emergency Rooms' action plan. If change is to take place on the national political level it will need someone like Clifton, a balanced voice in the partisan debates on health care reform."

"Flatlined does a wonderful job of alerting readers to the causes of our health care crisis, while providing recommendations for reform. The true strength of this book comes from Clifton's presentation from the ground up as a practicing surgeon and physician who successfully blends his own experiences and observations with a serious examination of the existing literature."

"Dr. Clifton accurately diagnoses many of the substantive flaws in the American health care system while providing a heart-breaking set of anecdotes that illustrate its tragic consequences. A must-read for those who want remarkable insight into our eroding infrastructure, perverse payment incentives, and fragmented delivery system."

"Guy Clifton is able to draw readers into his treatise on the health care conundrum. Clifton's solutions offer insight into the complexity of a system in urgent need of change. Clear, concise, well organized, and well researched, the book could be a quick read, but the statistics are so compelling and the issues are so complex that readers will be hard-pressed not to pause."