Menu
Top of the pile
79
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
91/100Critics
67/100Scholars
Author:
Ricardo Nuila
Publisher:
Scribner
Date:
March 14, 2023
Where does one go without health insurance, when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? In The People's Hospital, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care. Each patient eventually lands at Ben Taub, the county hospital where Ricardo Nuila has worked for over a decade.
What The Reviewers Say
[Nuila] humanizes his points in meticulous and compassionate detail through focusing primarily on the stories of five Ben Taub patients. So many medical narratives center on the ugly endgame: very sick people at their worst.
Ricardo Nuila’s attempt to untangle the labyrinthine system of American hospitals and, more crucially, American medical insurance.
The author’s lyricism and empathy defy both typical medical journalism and the reduction of patient care to the management of charts and bills. Nuila’s complete, deeply personal dedication to his content and his exceptional command of prose allow him to translate the mercy, authority, and sense of urgency that patients want at their bedsides and citizens want in policy debates..
Woven into [these] case studies are poignant reflections on the life of a doctor and incisive analyses of how for-profit medicine hurts patients. This is an urgent and essential call for a more humane healthcare system..
