The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich

by Thom Hartmann

Overview

Popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to implement affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.


"For-profit health insurance is the largest con job ever perpetrated on the American people—one that has cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives since the 1940s,” says Thom Hartmann.

Other countries have shown us that affordable universal healthcare is not only possible but also effective and efficient. Taiwan’s single-payer system saved the country a fortune as well as saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, enabling the country to implement a nationwide coronavirus test-and-contact-trace program without shutting down the economy. This resulted in just ten deaths, while more than 500,000 people have died in the United States.

Hartmann offers a deep dive into the shameful history of American healthcare, showing how greed, racism, and oligarchic corruption led to the current “sickness for profit” system. Modern attempts to create versions of government healthcare have been hobbled at every turn, including Obamacare.

There is a simple solution: Medicare for all. Hartmann outlines the extraordinary benefits this system would provide the American people and economy and the steps we need to take to make it a reality. It’s time for America to join every industrialized country in the world and make health a right, not a privilege.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781523091638
Publisher:	Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Publication date:	09/07/2021
Series:	The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series , #6
Pages:	176
Sales rank:	165,181
Product dimensions:	4.90(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Thom Hartmann is a four-time winner of the Project Censored Award, a New York Times bestselling author of thirty-two books, and America’s #1 progressive talk radio show host. His show is syndicated on local for-profit and nonprofit stations and broadcasts nationwide and worldwide. It is also simulcast on television into nearly 60 million US and Canadian homes.

Table of Contents

Introduction: How a Single-Payer Healthcare System Helped Stop COVID-19 1

Medicare for All-Why? 3

Medicare for All-How? 8

Part 1 How Bad Things Are in AMerica 13

How the Insurance Industry Bought Joe Lieberman and Killed the Public Option 14

Obamacare: Rube Goldberg Meets Health Insurance 16

Wendell Potter: A Good Man in a Bad Job 19

"Dollar Bill" McGuire and the Privatization of Medicare 25

The "Advantage" War against Medicare 28

You Are Locked-in to Medicare Advantage 34

Rick Scott Killed Charlene Dill 37

Work to Live, or Live to Work? 42

Part 2 The Origins of America's Sickness-for-Profit System 47

Germany Gets the World's First Single-Payer System in 1884 48

America, the Land of the Sick 53

Frederick Ludwig Hoffman Makes a Discovery 54

Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro 57

From Scientific Racism to Libertarianism 60

New York Shakes Up the Insurance Industry 63

From Scientific Racism to "No Compulsory Healthcare!" 65

Prudential Helps Kill America's First Healthcare-for-All Campaign 69

Part 3 The Modern Fight for a Human Right to Healthcare 75

Is Healthcare a Right or a Privilege? 76

Why Social Security Doesn't Already Include a Right to Healthcare 79

Healthcare to Defeat Fascism 84

The Beveridge Report: The British Plan for Defense and Welfare 88

How Canada Won a Right to Healthcare 92

LBJ Takes It to Reagan and the Doctors 97

Medicare: America's Most Successful Racial Integration Program 102

Medicare "Inspectors" Defeat Goldwater's Racists 104

Medicare Ends Segregation in America's Hospitals 106

Ted Kennedy's Fight for Expansion 109

Part 4 Saving Lives with a Real Healthcare System 113

Undoing Reaganomics and Reducing Inequality Would Save Lives 114

Buy the Insurance Companies! 119

Medicare for All: The Losers 122

The Impact of Medicare for All on Business 124

Want a Green New Deal? Get Medicare for All First 125

"It Takes a Crisis" 137

Notes 139

Acknowledgments 149

Index 151

Editorial Reviews

Hartmann's take on our health care debacle is informative, fascinating, and hopefully useful.”
—Booklist

“Thom Hartmann’s work is always well researched. Thom is a master communicator who gives his readers a clear connection from our nation’s history to who we are today.”
—Joe Madison, The Black Eagle on SiriusXM and lifelong civil rights activist and movement leader
 
“This book is a must-read to understand the history of America’s healthcare up to the present-day COVID pandemic. Hartmann vividly exposes the forces opposing universal health care, specifically insurance companies and the AMA, as well as overt racism and deep fears of socialism.”
—Justin A. Frank, MD, author, Trump on the Couch
 
“Thom Hartmann’s latest book is a must-read for everyone who wants the United States to join the rest of the world and provide healthcare as a human right through the enactment of Medicare for All.”
—Nancy J. Altman, President, Social Security Works

From the Publisher