Media inquiries, including interview and review copy requests:
Timothy Rusch, Communications Director, Demos
Tel: (212) 633-1405 Email: press@demos.org
PRAISE FOR SICK
". . . a terrific new book on our dysfunctional health care system . . ."
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Paul Krugman, The New York Times
"The timing of this book is perfect. . . . Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at The New Republic, lucidly shows how America's system for financing medical care helps determine who gets proper medical attention – and who doesn't. He tells this story through the experiences of ordinary people . . . But Sick is much more than a meticulously drawn and moving compilation of crises. It is also an edifying primer on how we got here. To fine effect, the author weaves summaries of health care history into the case studies. . . . meaningful changes in health care, at least at the federal level, will surely follow the incrementalism that marked policy changes in the Clinton years. Of course, incrementalism, too, can lead to a health care revolution. And Cohn's important book brings us closer to that day."
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Sally Satel, New York Times Sunday Book Review
"Who should read Sick by Jonathan Cohn? Every political candidate for president. Every insurer. Every person who has ever been hospitalized or will be hospitalized. In other words everybody. Sick is one of those rare books that combines the personal with the sharply analytical to drive the point home that our health care crisis is a national shame defined by greed, political impotence, and too many stories of decent Americans forced to live and die indecently."
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Buzz Bissinger, author of
Friday Night Lights
"This is a stunningly important book. In one damning true story after another, Jonathan Cohn lays bare the tragedy of our health care system. He has shown that we have no choice but either to fix it or watch our country decline."
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Atul Gawande, author of
Complications
"Jonathan Cohn weaves personal tragedies and policy failures into a tapestry of shame. His book will infuriate you enough to make you want to scream at every member of Congress, 'Read this!'"
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David K. Shipler, author of
The Working Poor
"Jonathan Cohn's Sick is an eye-opening work on healthcare in America told through the stories of those in need. This book will serve as the touchstone in our efforts to improve an ailing system."
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Jerome Groopman, author of
The Anatomy of Hope
"In Sick, Jonathan Cohn takes an honest, penetrating look at a health care system which is completely broken. Cohn has written a call-to-arms for a complete transformation of American medicine."
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Alex Kotlowitz, author of
There Are No Children Here
"No one has thought harder about our heath care system than Jonathan Cohn, no one has written about it with such eloquence and passion, and no one has brought to one of the most difficult problems we confront his acute sense of compassion, realism and justice."
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E.J. Dionne, Jr., author of
Why Americans Hate Politics
"I have seen the future of health care punditry and its name is Jonathan Cohn."
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Mickey Kaus, Kausfiles
"Jonathan Cohn . . . has written such a book, and I would urge Sen. Wyden to read it at least three times. … Each chapter of Cohn's book is devoted to one or two patient narratives that illuminate a particular dysfunction of the present medical system, and the chapters are arranged in such a way that the dysfunctions appear more or less in the order in which they first became significant national problems. The result is an 80-year chronology of repeated market failure, with each successive reform serving at best as temporary respite from the previous problem. Read it and weep. Capitalism can't deliver decent health care."
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Timothy Noah, Slate
"Mr. Cohn is a gifted storyteller, and he uses his skill to turn a wonkish matter into an uncommonly good read, tracing what he sees as the prevailing failures of various health care policy goals through compelling personal stories of patients spread across the country."
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Scott Gottlieb, The New York Sun
"This work of non-fiction is the byproduct of five years of first-hand reporting, and it brings moving stories to light. . . . while Cohn is open to varied solutions in reforming health care, he is unafraid to widen the parameters of the debate to include drastic overhauls of the current system--and Sick, above all, is a passionate and persuasive plea for just that."
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Michael Corcoran, Campus Progress
From Publishers Weekly
In this addition to the growing list of exposes of the toll our patchwork, profit-based health-care system takes on Americans, Cohn makes a plea for a universal coverage with a single-payer system regulated by the government. Drawing on research and riveting anecdotes, Cohn, a senior editor at the New Republic, describes how private insurers decide who and what they will--and will not--cover. He also examines how rising health-care costs lead corporations to seek ways to deny coverage to employees, such as hiring full-time workers as temps or independent contractors without health insurance. In tale after tale, Cohn documents the sometimes catastrophic results. they couldn't. Cohn points out that managed care initially had an altruistic goal of making health-care affordable for all. But by 1997, two-thirds of HMOs were controlled by for-profit companies concerned with making money rather than preventing and easing sickness. The author convincingly argues that Medicare and universal health care in such countries as France, though not perfect, are far superior to the system most Americans face. Much of this is well-trod territory, but Cohn is eloquent, and he's good at using case studies to dramatize and explain complex issues. (April 10)
© Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Stories of people who have run afoul of the US health care system illustrate some of its serious flaws.
New Republic senior editor Cohn, an advocate of universal health care, says the time has come for a serious debate about health-care reform in this country. He not only highlights current problems here, he also provides a history of health insurance in this country and the political thinking and social forces that have helped to shape it. He opens with the death of a Boston woman whose ambulance is diverted because of emergency-room overcrowding, which, sadly, is not uncommon. Cohn then takes the reader to Gilbertsville, N.Y., where Betsy Rotzler, who has cancer, foregoes medical care because her husband's health insurance vanished along with his job. In Deltona, Fla., self-employed Janice Ramsey cannot find a health-insurance plan that will accept her because she has diabetes. The Hilsabecks of Austin, Tex., are denied physical therapy for their handicapped son by their HMO. In Sioux Falls, S.D., Lester Sampson cannot get needed medications for his wife because he lost his health insurance when the meatpacking company at which he'd worked for more than 30 years canceled employees' retirement health benefits. The story of the Maldonados in Lawrence County, Tenn., shows what cutbacks in Medicaid do to a family with serious health problems and very limited resources. Cohn examines the financial problems facing nonprofit hospitals and how they cope with them through the story of a former nun without insurance who is sued by a Catholic charity hospital in Chicago. He demonstrates the critical state of large public hospitals serving the urban poor via Jose Montenegro's experiences at County-USC in Los Angeles. A final chapter portrays Denver's Doren family, sinking into debt because of restrictions on mental-health benefits. Compelling portrait of a deeply troubled system. (Agent: Kathy Robbins/Robbins Office Inc.)
www.kirkusreviews.com
February 1, 2007
