Video: Dr. Nortin Hadler on NC Bookwatch

Conflicts of interest, misrepresentation of clinical trials, hospital price fixing, and massive expenditures for procedures of dubious efficacy—these and other critical flaws leave little doubt that the current U.S. health-care system is in need of an overhaul. In The Citizen Patient: Reforming Health Care for the Sake of the Patient, Not the System, preeminent physician Nortin Hadler urges American health-care consumers to take time to understand the existing system and to visualize what the outcome of successful reform might look like. Central to this vision is a shared understanding of the primacy of the relationship between doctor and patient. Hadler shows us that a new approach is necessary if we hope to improve the health of the populace. Rational health care, he argues, is far less expensive than the irrationality of the status quo.

In an interview with North Carolina Bookwatch host D. G. Martin, Hadler discusses his motivations and goals for writing The Citizen Patient. Hadler explains how this new book fits into his series on health-care and how he ultimately hopes to teach readers to be proactive in their medical care and enter into a more balanced conversation when dealing with medical professionals.

Nortin M. Hadler, M.D., M.A.C.P., M.A.C.R., F.A.C.O.E.M., is professor of medicine and microbiology/immunology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attending rheumatologist at UNC Hospitals. He is author of Rethinking Aging: Growing Old and Living Well in an Overtreated Society, among other books.

This interview originally aired on UNC-TV on May 9, 2013. For more interviews with UNC Press authors and others visit  NC Bookwatch.