An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back
by Elisabeth Rosenthal
Why your hospital bill is a made-up number.
For you if
you've opened a medical bill and wondered who decided that number.
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Rosenthal is a physician and former New York Times reporter, and she opens with the bills: the surprise charge, the markup, the price nobody can tell you in advance. Then she traces how hospitals, drug makers, insurers and device companies built a system where the price is whatever the system can get away with. The book ends with what a patient can actually do about it. Angry, practical and surprisingly easy to read.
Where This Book Lives
Pass with note. Published 2017, so some policy details have moved since; the US-only focus is the point, and the argument is the market-design failure, not any one villain. Rosenthal is a mainstream journalist and not a movement voice, which is useful for readers who distrust one. No documented concerns. Close relatives: Poverty, by America, Automating Inequality and Empire of Pain (suggested 10-14).
Related Viewing
Shares a topic or setting with this book, or several of its themes.
Wild Tales(2014)
dir. Damián Szifron
Same themes: Corporate Greed, Inequality
Six stories of people pushed one step too far.
Six short stories from Argentina, each about someone pushed one step past breaking: a road-rage feud, a demolition expert whose car keeps being towed, a wedding that explodes, a bureaucracy that crushes a man. Each one begins with a small insult and ends somewhere much worse. A black comedy about the thin line between civilization and revenge.
Why it’s here: It's what happens when the powerful keep being petty and the rest get tired. What's punk is the delight in taking the system's side-eye personally. What's pedagogical is the anthology format: six cases students can argue about, including where revenge stops being funny. Pairs with Accidental Death of an Anarchist, The Good Soldier Svejk and Our Man in Havana (suggested 10-21). Note: graphic, darkly comic violence, and the revenge isn't always aimed up; for adults and older teens. Spanish with subtitles.
Where to watch: Free: Tubi (with ads); rent $2.99-3.99 on Amazon and Apple TV; buy from $5.99 (JustWatch US, checked 2026-10-18; rent/buy prices not mapped per store). Verify.Letterboxd ↗
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