October 1, 2022
For many, U.S. health care is unaffordable and often unavailable. But not for patients at the Ben Taub Hospital, operated by the Harris Health System in Houston, TX. A doctor there, Nuila follows the cases of five patients to show how this publicly funded hospital supports the community by making good health care accessible to all.
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December 19, 2022
Physician Nuila debuts with a troubling yet inspirational look at the state of healthcare for America’s “most medically and financially vulnerable.” Spotlighting Ben Taub Hospital in Houston, Tex., “the largest safety-net hospital in one of America’s most diverse cities,” Nuila profiles seven patients caught up in a system that denies them life-saving medical care due to their lack of resources, and reveals the difference being treated with dignity can make. The book’s most harrowing sections recount the story of Geronimo (no last name given), a 36-year-old Mexican immigrant suffering from epilepsy, hepatitis C, and liver disease. With the help of hospital staff, Geronimo had previously applied for and been accepted into Medicaid, which would have paid for a liver transplant, only to have it revoked because his monthly disability payment was $179 too high. (He would have been covered in other states, Nuila explains, but Texas refused the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion.) Though a U.S. congressman intervened and Geronimo’s Medicaid coverage was reinstated, he died before a transplant could be scheduled. Woven into this and other, more hopeful, case studies are poignant reflections on the life of a doctor and incisive analyses of how for-profit medicine hurts patients. This is an urgent and essential call for a more humane healthcare system. Agent: Anna Stein, ICM Partners.
Starred review from February 1, 2023
A doctor and professor of medicine adds personal texture to one of the most divisive issues of our time. As a medical student resident and then hospitalist at Ben Taub Hospital, Houston's "largest safety-net hospital," Nuila has witnessed how American health care fails all patients but especially its most vulnerable. In his debut book, the author follows six under- or uninsured patients who are prey to biases and assumptions that fuel impersonal and imprecise care. The stories are revelatory and often heartbreaking--Stephen develops cancer in his tonsils; Roxana is an undocumented immigrant who needs multiple limb amputations; Ebonie is a Black mother navigating a high-risk pregnancy; Geronimo is a green-card holder in desperate need of a liver transplant; Christian is experiencing debilitating knee pain; Aqueria has lost access to medications to manage the HIV she was born with--and they all clearly demonstrate the woeful inadequacies of health insurance coverage in the U.S. Nuila, a skilled writer whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, Guernica, and other publications, shifts elegantly between these narratives and his personal story of following his calling to Ben Taub as well as a lucid study of America's decline into what he terms "Medicine Inc." Throughout, the author's lyricism and empathy defy both typical medical journalism and the reduction of patient care to the management of charts and bills. Nuila's complete, deeply personal dedication to his content and his exceptional command of prose allow him to translate the mercy, authority, and sense of urgency that patients want at their bedsides and citizens want in policy debates. In the author's hands, Ben Taub Hospital becomes a beacon of light that brings health care back to the realm of the personal, resisting the failures of partisan imagination and offering space for pioneering medicine and personal triumph. A compassionate, engrossing story of frustrated hopes and unlikely victories in American health care.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
October 16, 2023
Honoring the hospital where he trained (and now works at as a physician) and issuing a heartfelt plea for affordable health care for everyone in America are Nuila's two convergent themes in a tale studded with failures and frustration, aspirations and accomplishment. Ben Taub Hospital is known as ""Houston's largest hospital for the poor"" and serves as a safety net for vulnerable members of the community. Nuila shares stories that each feature some sort of struggle: the history of the hospital, his own personal and professional life, and the experiences of select patients he has encountered. These sick and suffering individuals include a woman who develops gangrene of her limbs after undergoing surgery for cancer, a young man in need of a liver transplant, and a woman with a high-risk pregnancy and bleeding. Nuila articulates how the current health care system, which attempts ""to solve sickness through the mechanism of business,"" isn't working. Thirty million folks in America don't have health insurance; another forty million more are underinsured. Nearly two-thirds of bankruptcies in the U.S. stem from medical bills. The People's Hospital compares favorably with other recent standout books dealing with the crucial issue of health inequities: Weathering (2023), by Arline Geronimus; The Viral Underclass (2022), by Steven Thrasher; and The Emergency (2022), by Thomas Fisher. At some point, we are all patients. At that moment, way too many of us will tragically learn that patience with America's health system is not a virtue.
COPYRIGHT(2023) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.