The Hidden History of American Healthcare

The Hidden History of American Healthcare

by Thom Hartmann
Released September 2021
Publisher(s): Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 9781523091652

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Book description

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.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. Contents
  6. Introduction: How a Single-Payer Healthcare System Helped Stop COVID-19
    1. Medicare for All—Why?
    2. Medicare for All—How?
  7. Part One: How Bad Things Are in America
    1. How the Insurance Industry Bought Joe Lieberman and Killed the Public Option
    2. Obamacare: Rube Goldberg Meets Health Insurance
    3. Wendell Potter: A Good Man in a Bad Job
    4. “Dollar Bill” McGuire and the Privatization of Medicare
    5. The “Advantage” War against Medicare
    6. You Are Locked-in to Medicare Advantage
    7. Rick Scott Killed Charlene Dill
    8. Work to Live, or Live to Work?
  8. Part Two: The Origins of America’s Sickness-for-Profit System
    1. Germany Gets the World’s First Single-Payer System in 1884
    2. America, the Land of the Sick
    3. Frederick Ludwig Hoffman Makes a Discovery
    4. Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro
    5. From Scientific Racism to Libertarianism
    6. New York Shakes Up the Insurance Industry
    7. From Scientific Racism to “No Compulsory Healthcare!”
    8. Prudential Helps Kill America’s First Healthcare-for-All Campaign
  9. Part Three: The Modern Fight for a Human Right to Healthcare
    1. Is Healthcare a Right or a Privilege?
    2. Why Social Security Doesn’t Already Include a Right to Healthcare
    3. Healthcare to Defeat Fascism
    4. The Beveridge Report: The British Plan for Defense and Welfare
    5. How Canada Won a Right to Healthcare
    6. LBJ Takes It to Reagan and the Doctors
    7. Medicare: America’s Most Successful Racial Integration Program
    8. Medicare “Inspectors” Defeat Goldwater’s Racists
    9. Medicare Ends Segregation in America’s Hospitals
    10. Ted Kennedy’s Fight for Expansion
  10. Part Four: Saving Lives with a Real Healthcare System
    1. Undoing Reaganomics and Reducing Inequality Would Save Lives
    2. Buy the Insurance Companies!
    3. Medicare for All: The Losers
    4. The Impact of Medicare for All on Business
    5. Want a Green New Deal? Get Medicare for All First
    6. “It Takes a Crisis”
  11. Notes
  12. Acknowledgments
  13. Index

Product information

  • Title: The Hidden History of American Healthcare
  • Author(s): Thom Hartmann
  • Release date: September 2021
  • Publisher(s): Berrett-Koehler Publishers
  • ISBN: 9781523091652