Book of the Year

Critical Condition : How Health Care in America Became Big Business--and Bad Medicine (Hardcover) by Donald L. Barlett & James B. Steele. Doubleday, 2004. This book is an absolute must read for Albertans, Ralph Klein, Stephen Harper and anyone else who thinks that privatization of Canada's health care system is the answer to our prayers. This book gives a good overview of the "wallstreetization" of health care in America and how it has resulted in a substandard health care system where millions of people go without care; where the per person costs of administering the system are more than twice the per-person administrative costs in Canada, and in particular where bankruptcies and typical Wall Street corruption and meddling have resulted in huge cutbacks, inefficiencies and, in some cases, a complete breakdown of health care infrastructure in America.