The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

Physician Nuila explores what happens when someone in America cannot afford health care. Narrating his own work, he shares the stories of five uninsured patients—Stephen, Christian, Geronimo, Roxana, and Ebonie—at Houston’s Ben Taub hospital, a “safety-net” hospital where access to insurance is not required for care. Though their medical needs differ greatly, they each struggle to access and afford lifesaving care. Nuila empathetically interweaves the patients’ stories with information on the history, politics, and beliefs that built, sustained, and gutted the American health care system. Nuila provides a human-centric view of U.S. health care and urgently communicates the crisis faced by millions of people in the country. Although the book is rich with data and statistics, he employs layperson’s terms to make the information more accessible.