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

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

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

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

by Thom Hartmann

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Overview

The New York Times–bestselling author explores the history of American healthcare system, what went wrong, and how it can be remedied.

Popular progressive radio host and 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: 9781523091652
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Publication date: 10/17/2023
Series: The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series , #6
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 176
Sales rank: 61,682
File size: 3 MB

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

How A Single-Payer Healthcare System Helped Stop COVID19 1
Medicare For All – Why? 2
Medicare for All – How? 4
Gut the gap 4
Build a robust system 5

Part One: How Bad Things Are in America 5
How the Insurance Industry Bought Joe Lieberman and Killed the Public Option 5
Obamacare: Rube Goldberg Meets Health Insurance 6
Wendell Potter: A good man in a bad job 8
“Dollar Bill” McGuire & the Privatization of Medicare 10
The “Advantage” war against Medicare 11
You are locked-in to Medicare Advantage 14
Rick Scott Killed Charlene Dill 15
Work to Live, or Live to Work? 17

Part Two: The Origins of America's Sickness-For-Profit System 18
Germany gets the world's first single-payer system in 1884 18
America, the Land of the Sick 20
Frederick Ludwig Hoffman Makes a Discovery 21
Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro 22
From Scientific Racism to Libertarianism 23
New York shakes up the insurance industry 24
From Scientific Racism to “No Compulsory Healthcare!” 25
Prudential helps kill America's first healthcare for all campaign 27

Part Three: The Modern Fight for a Human Right to Healthcare 29
Is Healthcare a Right or Privilege? 29
Why Social Security Doesn't Already Include A Right to Healthcare 30
Healthcare to Defeat Fascism 32
The Beveridge Report: The British Plan for Defense & Welfare 34
How Canada Won A Right to Healthcare 36
LBJ takes it to Reagan and the doctors 38
Medicare: America's most successful racial integration program 40
Medicare “inspectors” defeat Goldwater's racists 41
Medicare ends segregation in America's hospitals 41
Ted Kennedy's Fight for Expansion 43

Part Four: Saving Lives with a Real Healthcare System 43
Undoing Reaganomics & Reducing Inequality Would Save Lives 44
Buy the insurance companies! 46
Medicare For All: The Losers 47
The Impact of Medicare for All on Business 48
Want a Green New Deal? Get Medicare for All First 48
Paying for Medicare For All 50
“It Takes a Crisis” 52
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