About this item
Award-winning New York Times reporter Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal reveals the dangerous, expensive, and dysfunctional American healthcare system, and tells us exactly what we can do to solve its myriad of problems. It is well documented that our healthcare 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 healthcare 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 healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.
About the Author
Dr. Elisabeth L. Rosenthal, was appointed editor-in-chief of Kaiser Health News in 2016, after more than 2 decades with the New York Times. She received a B.S. degree in biology from Stanford University, an M.A. degree in English literature from Cambridge University, and an M.D. degree from Harvard Medical School.
Rosenthal began her Times career as a reporter in the science department, and went on to cover the health and hospitals beat on the metro desk. In 2008, after a stint in Beijing and another in Rome, she returned to the U.S. as a New York-based Times senior writer covering environmental issues.
Rosenthal went back to healthcare writing after being asked to cover the Affordable Care Act during the 2012 election campaign. Libby's two-year-long New York Times series "Paying Till it Hurts" (2013-14) won many prizes for both health reporting and its creative use of digital tools. "An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take it Back," her first book, grew out of her desire to help patients understand and tackle the high cost of U.S. medicine.
Kaiser Health News is an independent, non-profit, newsroom based in D.C. focusing on health and health policy. Its stories appear in a wide range of media partners from the New York Times and the Washington Post to NPR and the Daily Beast. (It is not related to Kaiser Permanente or the Kaiser Health System.)
