The People's Hospital Quotes

“By reducing medicine to a set of ones and zeroes, algorithmania puts medicine’s focus on the doctor, not the patient; the doctor becomes the protagonist. If a doctor satisfies the road map, then in their own mind, they have satisfied the patient. Diagnosis and treatment come down to how a doctor follows a road map rather than the report the patient gives. Ultimately, algorithmania pushes people out in the name of science and costs. It makes medicine more of a technical job rather than a vocation.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“What’s good enough for doctors should be the medical standard for a community.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“But “people” went beyond practice. How a doctor interacted with their patient was just as important in helping a sick person as the science and the cost, and so “people” includes that doctor’s personal imprint, or style. Graham’s style had pried out key information from Sam. It had allowed him to evaluate the diabetes with a more precise scientific lens. “People” was medicine’s art.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“Medical-industrial complex” paints the picture of a firing squad, except the squad is disorganized, each of the gunmen—the insurance companies, doctors, hospitals, and Big Pharma—aiming not only for us but also for the other gunmen.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“I’m not really sure how to try to do my job without that belief.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“Washington, DC, for instance, has the nation’s highest MMR at 38.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births. A graph in this study shows how the rate for African American women has remained consistently high for decades. White mothers in the District, however, have the nation’s lowest rate. Not a single white mother died in DC within forty-two days of childbirth from 2005 to 2014.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“Healthcare remains linked to the question of worthiness. The question of who deserves healthcare and who doesn’t remains fundamental to how Americans access doctors and hospitals.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“The question is, if the United States wants to achieve more equality in healthcare, can it jump from the many tiers created by Medicine Inc. toward a more equitable single-tier system like Medicare for All?”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“Often in healthcare, the challenge isn’t in finding answers but in implementing them.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“At Ben Taub, people are admitted from the emergency room into the hospital wards based not on whether or not they’ve earned healthcare, but on the basis of one question: Sick or not sick?”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“If we look at Medicine Inc.’s history and how it operates today, five basic assumptions stand out that make it distinctly American: The government should not produce or provide healthcare. It’s okay to use public funds to purchase private healthcare for certain people, but only companies or private practitioners should provide healthcare. Those who receive healthcare have earned it, whether through work or through wealth. Fairness means ensuring that the deserving people receive better healthcare. There is no significant conflict between the income a doctor generates and their duty to the public. Doctors can practice simultaneously as businesspeople and as professionals sworn to a code of ethics without major repercussions. Science is impersonal and best aligns with commercial needs, not public ones. Science’s primary beneficiaries should be people who can afford to pay for it. The primary goal of healthcare is to generate income for providers. Other goals, like preventing sickness and empowering people, can happen, but only if the first goal is met. These tenets are so much a part of American healthcare that we don’t even realize our political debates reinforce them.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“Right in the middle of a pregnancy, Ebonie had left the country’s safest state for expectant mothers—where the mortality rate looked more like that of France or Germany—for one of its most dangerous. Her new home state, Texas, had the same maternal mortality rate as Mongolia.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“Ben Taub is Houston’s largest hospital for the poor—many working, some not—who cannot afford medical care. That is, after all, the definition of a safety-net hospital: one that serves society’s most medically and financially vulnerable.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“also open to people with health insurance. In Texas, the state with the nation’s largest uninsured population, and perhaps the worst state in the union to live in if you’re poor and chronically ill, scores of people come here.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine

“The primary goal of healthcare is to generate income for providers. Other goals, like preventing sickness and empowering people, can happen, but only if the first goal is met.”
― Ricardo Nuila, The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine