Pay Up or Die! 5 Books That Demonstrate How Fucked Up Healthcare in America is

The American healthcare system is a labyrinth of inefficiencies, inequities, and outright injustices — where a single trip to the emergency room can leave you drowning in debt, medical racism runs rampant, and life-saving treatments are rationed based on wealth rather than need. If you’ve ever wondered how a country that spends more on healthcare than any other still manages to deliver some of the worst outcomes among developed nations, these five books lay it all bare. From systemic medical neglect to corporate greed, these reads expose the brutal realities of a system designed to prioritize profits over patients. Brace yourself, because once you see how deep the dysfunction runs, you won’t be able to unsee it.

Best Book About How Corporate Greed Destroyed American Healthcare: An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal

We all know how screwed up the healthcare industry in America is these days, and An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back by Elisabeth Rosenthal is an excellent starting point to understanding just how broken the system is. Name-dropped by Luigi Mangione in his manifesto, Rosenthal received her M.D. degree from Harvard University and gained real-world doctoring experience at New York Hospital before she quit her practice and began writing for The New York Times. New York City’s loss has been our gain because as a double-threat talent, Rosenthal doesn’t just articulate the symptoms of a shitty system with her strong writing, she uses her medical training and expertise to offer treatments and solutions. It’s an absolutely searing and extremely scathing critique of the for-profit healthcare industry that will only further validate our already justified rage toward the business of healthcare.

Best Book About the Medical Neglect of Endometriosis and Women’s Health: BLEED: Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care by Tracey Lindeman

If you’re so frustrated and disgusted by the way health care and health insurance is handled in the United States and you’re thinking that maybe it might be better in Canada, let us assure you that it’s pretty fucked up north of the border, too! In BLEED: Destroying Myths and Misogyny in Endometriosis Care, the veteran Canadian journalist Tracey Lindeman combines her personal experience with research and interviews to highlight the many unfortunate -isms and -obias many marginalized people experience when they visit the doctor: transphobia, racism, fatphobia, ageism, classism, and of course, misogyny. Here, Tracey lays bare a system that routinely dismisses pain, gaslights patients, and forces people to fight for even the most basic care — especially those with conditions like endometriosis, which disproportionately affects women and has long been misunderstood, dismissed, or outright ignored by the medical establishment. Through a mix of investigative journalism and personal narrative, BLEED exposes the gaping cracks in a so-called healthcare system that claims to be universal but often leaves the most vulnerable to suffer in silence.

Best Book About the Political Battle Over Healthcare Reform in America: The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage by Jonathan Cohn

Did you know that the United States is the only developed country in the whole entire world that does not promise its citizens access to medical care? It’s true! In fact, American health care is so fucked up that when Jonathan Cohn published Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price in 2007, it became dated and obsolete relatively quickly, as some of the specific ways American health care was fucked up changed into a whole new kind of fucked up. That ever-mutating dysfunction necessitated the follow-up publication The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage in 2021, where Cohn delivers a compelling and deeply researched account of the decade-long battle over the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Tracing the law’s origins, political struggles, and lasting impact, Cohn explores how healthcare reform became one of the most polarizing issues in American politics. Through interviews with key players — including policymakers, activists, and everyday Americans affected by the ACA — he unpacks the ideological clashes that shaped the law’s passage and the relentless efforts to dismantle it. With a sharp analysis of the broader healthcare system and the ongoing fight for universal coverage, The Ten Year War offers a crucial perspective on what the ACA achieved, where it fell short, and what the future of American healthcare might look like. Assuming, of course, we ever get our shit together.

Best Book About the Racist History of Medical Experimentation in the U.S.: Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet A. Washington

Harriet A. Washington is easily one of the most brilliant, fearless, and necessary voices in medical ethics and historical scholarship today, if not the most important ever. In Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present, she delivers a searing, meticulously researched exposé of one of the most shameful, horrifying, and deeply entrenched aspects of American medicine: the systemic abuse, exploitation, and dehumanization of Black bodies in the name of “science.” From the earliest days of colonial slavery, where enslaved people were treated as disposable test subjects, to the grotesque medical atrocities of the 20th century — most infamously the Tuskegee Syphilis Study — Washington traces the long, unbroken lineage of medical racism that still poisons the healthcare system today. She unearths stories of Black patients who were experimented on without consent, denied anesthesia because of racist myths about pain tolerance, and subjected to brutal procedures that white doctors wouldn’t dream of inflicting on their white patients.

But Washington doesn’t just document historical horrors; she also exposes how these very same racist dynamics continue today in the form of medical neglect, disproportionate maternal mortality rates, under-prescription of pain medication for Black patients, and the for-profit exploitation of Black bodies in clinical trials and organ donation. She forces us to reckon with an infuriating truth: The American medical system was totally downright built on the suffering of Black people, and its legacy of exploitation hasn’t ended — it’s just evolved. This book is not just a history lesson; it’s a call to action. It is an unflinching, gut-wrenching indictment of a system that has devalued and destroyed Black lives for centuries under the guise of “progress.” Washington’s brilliance lies not only in her exhaustive research but in her ability to force the reader to sit with their discomfort and reckon with the brutal, undeniable reality that racism is not merely an unfortunate side effect of American medicine — it is downright fucking foundational. Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award, Medical Apartheid is essential reading for anyone who dares to call themselves an advocate for justice. This book demands to be read, discussed, and acted upon.

Best Book About How Insurance Companies Screw Us Over: Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It by Jay M. Feinman

Already a 21st century cult classic thanks to a certain individual that reminds the public of Super Mario’s brother, Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It is alternately brilliant and frustrating. The brilliance is in Jay M. Feinman’s ability to unpack the deliberately Byzantine process that insurance companies execute: routinely delaying their response to valid claims submitted by policyholders and then denying their validity, only to aggressively defend these literally murderous decisions with their seemingly bottomless legal resources. However, the frustration lies in the lack of solutions our current state of late-stage capitalism has to offer; fighting back against health insurance companies often feels like an exercise in futility. Even when patients manage to challenge denials, the process is exhausting, expensive, and intentionally designed to discourage appeals. Feinman methodically exposes the rigged architecture that make it nearly impossible for individuals to hold insurers accountable, revealing harrowing stories of people financially ruined and physically abandoned by a system designed to fail them. Though Delay Deny Defend provides a roadmap for resistance, the sobering reality is that meaningful reform remains elusive — leaving most Americans trapped in a rigged game where the house always wins.

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