What if we had a decent, publicly-funded health system — available to everybody, with or without insurance? We’ve got one, says Dr. Ricardo Nuila. It’s where he works.
And it could be a model for the whole country. Yes, really.
That’s the pitch he makes in his new book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine. It’s a love letter to Houston’s Ben Taub hospital, and an argument for bringing Ben Taub’s model — efficient, innovative, and cheap —to the rest of the country.
And if that seems unlikely in today’s political climate, well: Ben Taub’s wild origin story was plenty unlikely too.
That story takes us to the 1960’s, when Dutch novelist and playwright Jan de Hartog moved to Houston. He fell in love with the bustling, futuristic home of NASA and the Astrodome.
But he also discovered the city’s dreadful underside: a neglected charity hospital where largely African-American patients are left to seek health care in unsanitary and unsafe — hellish — conditions.
De Hartog and a group of Quaker volunteers waged a campaign to change that, and eventually found an unlikely ally who brought it over the finish line.
The People's Hospital is a heck of a book. We might want to start a book group someday, just to talk about it. If you want to grab a copy, here’s a link. (Or: Audiobook, or ebook.)
Here’s a transcript of the episode.
Send your stories and questions. Or call 724 ARM-N-LEG.
And of course we’d love for you to support this show.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
An important message from RadioPublic
Reporter Bob Herman from STAT News unpacks his blockbuster investigation about the country’s biggest health care company.
Covering the American health care system means we tell some scary …
Health insurance sucks. Which leaves lots of us counting down the days until we turn 65 and can get on Medicare – the federal government’s health insurance program for seniors.
But Medicare …
A listener wrote to us at the beginning of the year with a query, “I was just reading the news about the price of insulin going down to $35! Is that …
Dealing with the American health care system as a patient means lots of tough moments – unexpected bills, meds not covered, insurance and hospitals making you go back and forth without a …
Real quick: Now's the best time to support this show! Thanks to a few super-star Arm and a Leg listener/donors, your donation is matched two for one right now. Here's the link to donate.
…
You can listen to episodes right here on the website, or if you prefer, in a podcast app. Listening in an app makes it easier to keep track of what you’ve already heard, listen without using your data plan and many other conveniences.