Book Review: The Color of Atmosphere (a pediatrician's journey into and out of medicine)

Excerpted from my blog: www.Jill-Elizabeth.com.  For the full review, please visit me at http://blog.jill-elizabeth.com/2011/05/24/book-review-the-color-of-....

The Color of Atmosphere by Maggie Kozel, M.D.

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This engaging memoir opens with the story of Dr. Kozel’s childhood and how her less-than-ideal home life sparked both an interest in medicine and the drive to become a doctor. Her journey to (and through) college, medical school, and residency is presented in a crisp, clear voice. The stories of her personal and professional lives intertwine; she marries a colleague (a neurologist) and at the completion of their residencies the two move to Japan to fulfill their educational obligations to the U.S. Navy.

In Japan, Dr. Kozel gets her first taste of the “official” practice of medicine in a U.S. Naval Hospital; it is not until several years later, when she and her husband return to private practice in the United States, however, that she gets her first taste of the “official” U.S. health care delivery system – and the latter taste is decidedly not to her liking. So much so, in fact, that it ultimately leads her to walk away from medicine altogether.

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Dr. Kozel’s personal and professional journey, which culminates in her decision to stop practicing medicine and begin teaching high school chemistry, is presented in a way that is touching, entertaining, and insightful. The story was easy to follow and Dr. Kozel and her struggles with “corporate medicine” will likely resonate with anyone who has had occasion to engage with a health plan or hospital in the past twenty years. But resonance aside, I have to respectfully disagree with her ultimate position: that the military health care delivery system, rather than private health insurance, is the penultimate way to provide health care services and should serve as the model for U.S. health care reform.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I say this as an attorney and former health policy and government relations professional who spent fifteen years working in the insurance and pharmaceutical sectors. I started my career in Washington, DC, during the Clinton health care reform era. I have more than a little bit of experience and first-hand knowledge backing me up when I say that, while the U.S. health care delivery system is not perfect, abandoning it altogether for a government-sponsored military-esque system is neither practical nor desirable.

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