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Medical economist Kleinke criticizes the United States' managed health care system as a dismal failure for consumers. Long an advocate for market-based reform in the health care he argues that today's privatized system fails to resemble a true market in any meaningful sense, with far too many layers of bureaucracy standing between the health care consumer and the direct provider, the physician. He argues for a "streamlined" plan that will remove employers from the health care insurance and will allow consumers to purchase insurance plans with non-taxed income. c. Book News Inc.

Using the tools of competitive strategic analysis, this text identifies and explores the five forces transforming the health care system - horizontal consolidation, vertical integration, industrialization, medical/financial risk assumption, and consumerism. Using these five forces to describe the health care system most likely to emerge in the next decade, it predicts very different fortunes and fates for the medical professions, and hospital, pharmaceutical, medical device, and managed care industries.