Sick

January 22, 2007
In this addition to the growing list of exposés 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.

March 1, 2007
As a serious discussion of universal healthcare takes place once again in the United States, Cohn (senior editor, "New Republic") offers a convincing collection of stories about people dealing with the inequities and problems in the present system. Each story is linked to a specific issueincluding shrinking employer-based insurance, disappearing retiree insurance, private insurance, managed care, Medicaid, the uninsured, and coverage for mental healthand connected to the politics and economics that control the system. Cohn comes to what he considers the inevitable conclusionuniversal care deserves a fresh lookbefore comparing the U.S. system to those of other industrialized countries. The stories are based largely on first-person interviews; primary and secondary sources are well documented. Cohn's coverage is far from "untold," however, as his book joins a number of others on the same topic, including Susan Sered and Rushika Fernandopulle's similar "Uninsured in America: Life and Death in the Land of Opportunity". Recommended for libraries with large healthcare policy collections.Dick Maxwell, Porter Adventist Hosp. Lib., Denver

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