Booklist
Overcrowded emergency rooms force ambulances to drive patients to more distant hospitals; the uninsured crowd emergency rooms for nonemergency health care, adding to the problem as hospitals and patients struggle to balance supply and demand, and profitability. New Republic reporter Cohn offers personal stories of families--and the nation--suffering health-care crises. A man who has lost his health insurance watches his wife die of cancer that might have been detected earlier if he'd had better coverage, a Texas woman fights with her insurer to get her disabled baby therapy that could help him learn to walk. Cohn presents case after case of Americans bereft of adequate health care coverage after losing their jobs, or seeing their employers cut back on coverage, or insurers fight to provide the minimum of coverage. Cohn uses each case study to provide a historical and modern perspective on insurance and health care delivery, and the factors that have led to the current crisis.

-- Vanessa Bush, Copyright 2007 © American Library Association. All rights reserved.