by Marty Makary
First published 2019
American healthcare has become a predatory system that enriches middlemen while bankrupting patients. Dr. Marty Makary, a leading healthcare expert, travels across the country to document how medical costs have spiraled into a destructive bubble. One in five Americans carries medical debt in collections, and healthcare expenses now threaten small businesses nationwide. Makary reveals the price-gouging tactics, hidden fees, and elusive money games that divert healthcare spending away from actual patient care. He shows how much of what Americans pay for healthcare has nothing to do with health itself. The book profiles innovators who are disrupting this broken system and offers practical strategies for patients and business leaders to secure better healthcare deals. Makary calls on the medical establishment to return to medicine's original mission of caring for vulnerable people, arguing that a movement to restore healthcare's true purpose is already underway and can rebuild public trust while saving the country from crushing medical costs.
Genres: medical, business, politics, economics, non-fiction, health, 21st-century, academic
Vibes: informative, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: investigative-journalism, social-commentary
Setting: United States
Period: 21st Century
288 pages · Hardcover · Bloomsbury Publishing