
An American Sickness
How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back
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Narrated by:
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Nancy Linari
Award-winning New York Times reporter Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American health-care system and tells us exactly what we can do to solve its myriad of problems.
It is well documented that our health-care system has grave problems, but how, in only a matter of decades, did things get this bad? Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms; she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. Rosenthal spells out in clear and practical terms exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship, explaining step by step the workings of a profession sorely lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate a byzantine system and also to demand far-reaching reform.
Breaking down the monolithic business into its individual industries - the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, drug manufacturers - that together constitute our health-care system, Rosenthal tells the story of the history of American medicine as never before. The situation is far worse than we think, and it has become like that much more recently than we realize. Hospitals, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Americans are dying from routine medical conditions when affordable and straightforward solutions exist.
Dr. Rosenthal explains for the first time how various social and financial incentives have encouraged a disastrous and immoral system to spring up organically in a shockingly short span of time. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a health-care system that no longer has our well-being at heart.
©2017 Elisabeth Rosenthal (P)2017 Penguin AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
"An eye opening discussion ... [An] important book.... Rosenthal told an interviewer her goal was to 'start a very loud conversation' that will be 'difficult politically to ignore.' We need such a conversation - not just about how the market fails, but about how we can change the political realities that stand in the way of fixing it.” (The New York Times Book Review)
“In this in-depth analysis of a malfunctioning system, Rosenthal makes a compelling case against the hospital and pharmaceutical executives behind the 'money chase,' and it’s hard to imagine a more educated, credible guide...The patients she interviewed share mind-boggling stories...She builds her case with one damning statistic after another...Rosenthal presents solutions both personal and societal in this commanding and necessary call to arms.” (Booklist [starred])
"Provocatively analyzes...Rosenthal unveils with surgical precision the 'dysfunctional medical market'...a startling cascade.” (Publishers Weekly [starred review])
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Outstanding summary of our current healthcare situation
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learned a lot!
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Information packed
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Good book. Sickening details.
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A true call to arms against financial abuses
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My favorite book of 2017
Brilliant and enticing
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it's beyond comprehensible that a system like this is allowed to exist
i'm especially disgusted with so many beyond greedy doctors for whom the Hippocrates Oath is clearly a massive joke
i cannot believe that people in the states actually agree to put up with that
my family and i live in Israel and the health-care system here is incredible compared to the one in the USA
i'm beyond disgusted!!!!!!!!
must read, utterly disgusting
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People need to practice preventive health and eat responsibly because NO one can afford chronic care. Very very sad.
SICK Healthcare
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A MUST Read
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Give how much good information is in this book - I did feel there as a major hole in that it was kind of one sided. When I spoke about some of the ideas in this book with some healthcare leaders I work with, they had some things to say that provided a different perspective. So just keep that in mind when reading.
A Fascinating Must Read - Is it Onesided?
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