by Jonathan Javitt

The White House counsel and former Health Czar, Walter Frisman, is found dead in a State Park. One of Washington’s most respected physicians is murdered in a seemingly senseless shooting. Across the country, a pattern, too grisly to imagine, begins to emerge from a seemingly unconnected string of bizarre deaths.

Washington physician Gwen McBean is simply trying to keep her father’s practice afloat despite the dual challenges of his illness and the many restrictions imposed by medicine in a managed care world. Her former boyfriend, now a Secret Service Officer, wants nothing more than a quiet post and an easy transition to private law practice. Unfortunately Mark was sent to observe the scene of Fristman’s death on behalf of the first family and can’t let it go. Despite his better judgement he involves Gwen and his own father Jacob in an intrigue that pits them against the resources of the global corporations that govern healthcare in a managed care world.

In Covered Lives, Washington physician and former White House staffer Jonathan Javitt takes the reader on a roller coaster ride from the intrigues of the Oval Office to the inner sanctums of managed healthcare corporations, from the slums of Washington to the ivory towers of government. Few will be able to put the book down and turn out the light!

Jonathan Javitt, M.D., M.P.H. is Vice Chairman and Chief Science Officer of e-MEDx, Inc., a health care software development company and a part-time professor of ophthalmology and health policy at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities. Dr. Javitt was a member of the White House Health Reform Task Force and has served as an expert consultant to the MediCare program, the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the World Bank, and the health ministries of several European countries. He is the author of more than 200 scientific books, chapters, articles, and abstracts, and the recipient of a Physician Scientist Award from the National Institutes of Health. Most recently, he was Senior Vice President and National Medical Director to United Health Care, Inc., one of the nation’s largest HMOs. When not writing and teaching, he spends his time developing internet software to connect patients and their physicians.

Hard cover; 6 x 9, ISBN 1-885003-59-5; $24.95 plus $3.50 S&H.