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NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON — one of the most important healthcare stories you will read.
Miracles and Meltdowns is a healthcare memoir, love story, and cautionary educational opportunity for Americans and their doctors, dissected through the author’s journey as a healthcare insider. Even with decades of experience across medical providers and insurance companies, his wife and family tragically fall victim to the very healthcare system he devoted his career to.
Watch the Miracles and Meltdowns Video Introduction — by Author Walt Culbertson!
Watch a short video featuring the Miracles and Meltdowns Reviews
The more serious your health challenge, the greater your odds of financial ruin and harmful care, with or without health insurance. Despite the hype and political proclamations, we do not have the best healthcare system in the world. Truly, in fact, we do not have a real healthcare system at all. We have Healthcare Roulette. We have healthcare that is built purely and simply on luck. All you can do is become as knowledgeable as you can, take control of your own care and records, become your own patient advocate and try to increase our odds standing at the great American Healthcare Roulette Table
Just when an unannounced change in the in-network status his wife’s medical center and their hospital, a one-week planned hospital stay with a five percent chance of anything going wrong turned into a three-month nightmare of weeks in the ICU, infected with MRSA, and more surgeries, Walt spent the last year of his wife’s life with her trying to divorce him because of the medical bills. As this poignant story so elegantly and at times bluntly shares, we live in a country where after several decades of marriage, a wife feels she must leave her husband so she can stop the bleeding. Not hers—that of her family. While this healthcare journey was their story, it could so easily become your journey. How easy? Read Miracles and Meltdowns. Learn from their experiences.
Deb is more than just the sum of her story, "Miracles and Meltdowns." Deb is the fabric of all of the pages devoted to what is wonderfully right—yet tragically wrong with our system of care. Through it all, Deb always wore a smile and a positivity that was as infectious as the MRSA she was given during her cancer journey. Everyone who met Deb marveled over her ability to time and time again seemingly beat all the odds. Deb stretched a pronounced and prophecized short battle into a five-year war. At her end, Deb wanted all, including doctors, nurses, and health plan bureaucrats, to learn from her healthcare journey of Miracles and Meltdowns.
NOW AVAILABLE online through Amazon.com!
NOW AVAILABLE online through Amazon.com!
NOW AVAILABLE online through Amazon.com!
Download a PDF of the Miracles and Meltdowns Table of Contents!
Want to read some of your NEXT BOOK? Download a sample that includes the entire front matter of Miracles and Meltdowns including the advanced reviews!
Throughout the book, there are valuable "Learning Opportunities" using real claim Explanation of Benefits (EOB) and other information.
Walt Culbertson is a leading healthcare industry veteran, futurist, and lecturer with four decades of recognized leadership and accomplishments in healthcare technology, privacy, security, and provider and health plan operations. Host and producer of the Medical Update Show, his focus today is helping doctors make the transition to value-based care and patient engagement and helping those with cancer, stand up to cancer, through the applied use of technology and education.
After fourteen years of watching Americans continue to struggle with a healthcare system exploding in costs and poor outcomes, the author finally determined to complete the promise he made to his wife during her last days. To finish the book they started together in the last year of her life, Miracles and Meltdowns.
One of the questions you will continually ask yourself as you read Miracles and Meltdowns? "If this could happen to the wife of a industry insider such as this, how could we ever hope to survive?" Addressing that question is a focus of Miracles and Meltdowns. To get you "mad as hell" thinking about your own care and that of your loved ones and not just scream "I'm not going to take it anymore," but do something about it! Join the chorus of those working and voting for a healthcare system that is affordable and accessible to all Americans!
Elizabeth Ridley is the editor of Miracles and Meltdowns! She was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and have a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Northwestern University and a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, where she studied under former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion. In 1994 she received a Hawthornden Fellowship to Hawthornden Castle in Lasswade, Scotland, and in 2011 she received a Literary Artist Fellowship from the Wisconsin Arts Board. Today she lives in Milwaukee with her two cats, Claudius and Calpurnia, and is busy developing and producing her first full-length feature film, Handle with Care, starring the award-winning British actor Peter Firth.
Ms. Ridley's works include; Saving Sadie: How a Dog That No One Wanted Inspired the World is her sixth book and her first work of co-written nonfiction. Searching for Celia, her fifth novel, was published in 2015 by Bold Strokes Books in New York. Her earlier novels are The Remarkable Journey of Miss Tranby Quirke (2009), Dear Mr. Carson (2006), Rainey’s Lament (1998), and Throwing Roses (1993).
Dr. Jerry Williamson authored the foreword for Miracles and Meltdowns. He is a Board Certified physician with a Masters in Health Jurisprudence from Loyola University Chicago School of Law. He is a Licensed Healthcare Risk Manager and is also certified in Healthcare Compliance by the Healthcare Compliance Association. He has over 35 years of experience in private practice and healthcare management. Following 15 years of private medical practice, he dedicated himself to healthcare administration and leadership. Dr. Williamson is the "Dr. Jerry" you will read about in the story and lived the Miracles and Meltdowns journey as a family friend, colleague, and healthcare mentor. He met the author in the late '90s when they were working together on various healthcare transformation efforts.
Jerry Williamson, M.D., F.A.A.P., MJ. CHC
Former V.P. and C.M.O.,
Cape Coral Hospital, Florida
A journey started suddenly with an X-ray and “I’m sorry!”
Learn from a five-year war with cancer and insurance companies, along with healthcare miracles connected by disastrous medical meltdowns. If you’re feeling blessed you have insurance, DON’T.
As you will read, you are NOT immune.
“If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor!”
After reading Miracles and Meltdowns, you will forever question anyone, on either side of the political aisle, who dares to utter such
“Fake News!”
Miracles and Meltdowns was published in August 17, 2020. You can get started on your journey today through the reviews of those who have read the advanced review copy.
Want to contact the author or have another question? Ready to dive into Miracles and Meltdowns? Special order your copy today and receive a free e-book copy!