Sick: The Untold Story of America's Health Care Crisis---And the People Who Pay the Price

America's health care system is unraveling. Every day, millions of hard-working people struggle to find affordable medical treatment for themselves and their families--unable to pay for prescription drugs and regular checkups, let alone hospital visits. Some of these people end up losing money. Others end up losing something even more valuable: their health or even their lives. In this powerful work of original reportage, Jonathan Cohn travels across the United States--the only country in the developed world that does not guarantee access to medical care as a right of citizenship--to investigate why this crisis is happening and to see firsthand its impact on ordinary Americans. The stories he brings back are tragic and infuriating. In Boston, a heart attack victim becomes a casualty of emergency room overcrowding when she is turned away from the one hospital that could treat her. In South Central L.A., a security guard loses part of his vision when he can't find affordable treatment for his diabetes. In the middle of the prairie heartland, a retired meatpacker sells his house to pay for the medications that keep him and his aging wife alive. And, in a tiny village tucked into the Catskill mountains, a mother of three young children decides against a costly doctor's visit--and lets a deadly cancer go undetected--because her husband's high-tech job no longer provides health insurance. Passionate, illuminating, and often devastating, Sick interweaves these stories with clear-eyed reporting from Washington and takes us inside the medical industry to chronicle the decline of America's health care system--and lays bare the consequences any one of us could suffer if we don't replace it.

About the Author :
Jonathan Cohn is a senior editor at The New Republic, where he has written about national politics and its impact on American communities for the past decade. He is also a contributing editor at The American Prospect and a senior fellow at the think tank Demos. Cohn, who has been a media fellow with the Kaiser Family Foundation, has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Mother Jones, Rolling Stone, Slate, and The Washington Monthly. A graduate of Harvard, he lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and two children.

Review :
"Cohn's book will infuriate you enough to make you want to scream at every member of Congress, 'Read this!'" - David K. Shipler, author of The Working Poor "A terrific new book on our dysfunctional health care system." - Paul Krugman, The New York Times "No one has thought harder about our heath care system than Jonathan Cohn." - E.J. Dionne, Jr., syndicated columnist and author of Why Americans Hate Politics "Jonathan Cohn's Sick is an eye-opening work on healthcare in America told through the stories of those in need." - Jerome Groopman, author of The Anatomy of Hope "This is a stunningly important book. Jonathan Cohn lays bare the tragedy of our health care system." - Atul Gawande, author of Complications "An 80-year chronology of repeated market failure. . . . Read it and weep." - Slate "In Sick, Jonathan Cohn . . . has written a call-to-arms for a complete transformation of American medicine." - Alex Kotlowitz, author of There Are No Children Here Sick is one of those rare books that combines the personal with the sharply analytical. - Buzz Bissinger, author of Friday Night Lights