But Castro, who has covered health policy for TIME since 1984, knows that in order for Americans to take an intelligent part in the national debate over reforming the health-care system, they must understand those arcane words. The ability to reconcile the human and practical aspects of health care with the technical details is what distinguishes Castro's story this week on doctors and managed-care networks. You might think it's a very good doctor, but it isn't. It's the one insurers will pay for, the one you have to go to. She talked to AIDS patients at San Francisco General and stood at the elbow of Dr. Wayne Isom as he performed open-heart surgery at New York Hospital.
Health care is a zero-sum game.
Every dollar we waste on something someone doesn't need is a dollar we don't have for a patient who needs help. Castro draws on personal experience in the book as well. Her father's stroke in 1991 confronted her with a bureaucracy that made cost, not wellness, the basis for his hospital release. Not until he realized that his recovery depended on himself and not the white coats he had so believed in all his life did her father improve. He finished reading Janice's book just before he died in May, at 79.