15 years ago the noted physician, Dr. Michael Lockshin, Professor of Medicine and Gynecology at Weill Cornell Medical School and Director of the Barbara Volker Center at the Hospital for Special Surgery wrote Guarded Prognosis, a book about the health care system from the point of view of a physician with broad experience in treating chronic disease. Michael Lockshin is one of America's preeminent experts in the long-term care of chronically ill patients. He is a pioneer in solving health-care issues that arise with the illnesses on which he has done his most renowned research-systemic lupus erythematosus, Antiphospholipid syndrome, and other autoimmune diseases which especially afflict women. Guarded Prognosis has been re-issued as an eBook. 15 years after its first publication, the reader will be struck by how far the we have come-in terms of electronic records and the new hospitalist system-but also by how little has changed for patients with chronic illness navigating the U.S. healthcare system. Guarded Prognosis is newly relevant in the light of the acrimonious debate over "Obamacare" whose passage Dr. Lockshin heartily endorses as a route to the universal health coverage so desperately needed by those with chronic illness. These affecting stories of chronically ill patients and the policy lessons learned from their experience make clear how important it is to change our inefficient, costly, and often inhumane healthcare system. Otherwise, each of us could be at risk not only from disease, but from fragmented and costly healthcare.