An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back

The downfall of the American healthcare system is occurring in a positive feedback loop. It is “rigged against [patients]” (214) and is perpetuated by patient complacency. Many younger Americans cannot fathom the healthcare system operating in any other way, so Rosenthal describes Part 2 as a “call to arms” that gives patients the tools to “fight back personally, politically, and systematically” (242). She gives the reader practical strategies that they can take as an individual and a list of reforms they should demand from the medical industry and those who regulate it. Most of these reforms do not require official legislation from Congress.

Many other developed countries (even those with less money than America) provide a much higher standard of healthcare. The situation is so dire that some Americans choose to emigrate for inexpensive healthcare procedures. One common feature of overseas healthcare markets that America might emulate is national fee schedules. Once fees are negotiated by hospitals, government officials, individual doctors, and scholars, they cannot be changed. This is already a feature that Medicare patients enjoy. It cuts costs by removing middlemen who seek to profit from price negotiations and reducing the need for doctors to spend time on administrative work.