Falling Through the Safety Net

In this stunning mixture of real life stories and cold-eyed analysis, Geyman brings you close up to the perils faced by every American. With nearly all Americans facing a lack of health insurance at some point, this is a book for you.

"Dr. John Geyman’s Falling Through the Safety Net provides a brilliant road map to this nation’s patchwork of medical coverage for the uninsured. As a practitioner, teacher, and medical leader, Geyman has learned his way around the safety net first hand. Powerful reading for all."—Fitzhugh Mullan, MD, author, Big Doctoring in America: Profiles in Primary Care.

"Once again, the legendary master of family medicine -addresses with clinical compassion the widespread concerns about "unsurance" and uncovered medical costs."—Donald Light, Professor of comparative health care -systems, Princeton University

To those who would take the Alfred E. Newman stance toward health insurance (What me worry, I’m healthy!), Geyman delivers some sobering statistics:

Eighty percent of the uninsured live in working families;

Sixty-seven million Americans are uninsured for at least one month in a twenty-eight month period;

One in five workers cannot afford insurance when offered by employers;

Even in families with two full-time wage earners, ten percent are uninsured.

Those who lack insurance face poor health care and increased risk of bad outcomes. The answer, argues Dr. Geyman, is one the majority of Americans already want: single payer health insurance.

This is the book for those who no longer want this problem to be as American as apple pie.

John Geyman, M.D., is professor emeritus of Family -Medicine at the University of Washington, and editor of the Journal of the American Board of Family Practice.