Every so often, I have the privilege of working on a manuscript that stays with me long after I finish reading it. Inefficient on Purpose is one of those books.
 

Dr. J. Benjamin Proctor does something remarkably difficult here: he takes an enormous, complicated subject, the American healthcare system, and makes it understandable, personal, and deeply human. He writes not only as a physician who has spent more than a decade caring for patients, but as someone who has experienced our healthcare system from the other side of the examination table as a patient and cancer survivor.
 

What affected me most about this book is that behind the statistics, policies, insurance denials, prior authorizations, pharmaceutical pricing, and billions of dollars are actual human beings. Patients are sick. Families are frightened. Doctors and nurses are trying to care for them. And between those people and the care they need stands an increasingly complicated system that Dr. Proctor argues has developed financial incentives that do not always align with the interests of patients.
 

His discussion of health insurance is particularly thought-provoking. He asks readers to consider something surprisingly fundamental: traditional insurance protects us against events that might happen, while needing healthcare at some point in our lives is essentially inevitable. From that premise, he begins dismantling assumptions many of us have probably never thought to question.
 

I also appreciated that this is not simply an angry indictment of everything associated with profit in medicine.

Dr. Proctor's position is considerably more nuanced. His own life was changed by Gleevec, and he recognizes the extraordinary investment and innovation required to develop new medications. At the same time, he distinguishes that innovation from practices he believes unnecessarily inflate costs or interfere with patient care. That willingness to make distinctions gives the book greater credibility and depth.
 

Some of the most compelling sections examine the enormous administrative machinery surrounding American medicine.

Dr. Proctor describes a system in which significant resources are devoted not to treating patients, but to billing, obtaining authorizations, appealing decisions, and convincing insurers to pay for care already provided. He connects those administrative burdens to the experiences of physicians, nurses, hospitals, and ultimately patients.
 

But Inefficient on Purpose does not stop at identifying problems.
 

That may be what I respect most about it.
 

Dr. Proctor proposes reforms. He argues for eliminating prior authorizations, addressing post-service claim denials, reforming pharmacy benefit managers, and making other structural changes designed to move healthcare back toward its fundamental purpose: caring for people.
 

You do not have to agree with every conclusion in this book for it to accomplish something important. It makes you think. It makes you question systems most of us have simply accepted because they have existed for so long. And, perhaps most importantly, it asks us whether we can build something better.

As an editor, I work with many manuscripts and many authors. Some books entertain us.

Some educate us. And then there are books written because an author genuinely believes something needs to change.
 

Inefficient on Purpose belongs in that last category.
 

Dr. Proctor has put his professional experience, personal story, research, and convictions on these pages. Whether you are a patient, physician, nurse, healthcare professional, policymaker, or simply an American who has ever wondered why getting healthcare can feel so unnecessarily difficult, this is a book worth reading.
 

It is bold. It is provocative. It is deeply personal.
 

And above all, it starts a conversation America desperately needs to have! Highly Recommended!