Finding Hope When Doctors Say There Is None: Surviving Cancer in the Harsh World of HMO Medicine

by F.H. Scribner

After being diagnosed with a lethal cancer, the author embarks on an investigative journey where he overcomes many barriers erected by his HMO, and undergoes surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. This is one of the first works to deal head-on with surviving cancer in the miserly world of managed care-HMOs. Within HMO medicine there is this frightful You -the patient- must become your own medical advocate if you’re to survive, or even get competent care. Rejecting HMO roadblocks and the HMO oncologist’s statistical opinion that a rare and lethal cancer would kill him within a matter of months, the author today, an 11-year survivor, initiates an explorative journey where he overcomes the innumerable profit-driven barriers fabricated by his HMO, and tracks down a life-preserving chemotherapy on the Internet.

448 pages, Paperback

First published March 6, 2001