num_pages: 352
description: Most Americans have historically viewed the nation’s great public hospitals – Charity, Grady, Cook County, and Parkland among them – as refuges of last resort for poor and uninsured people. But these iconic institutions – some closed, some renamed, others rebuilt -- have also served as a safety valve for the nation’s highly profitable medical industrial complex. They are a key to understanding the evolution of America’s $3 trillion health care system – not just for the poor, but the affluent as well, argues veteran journalist Mike King in a major new book, "A Spirit of Charity: Restoring the Bond between America and Its Public Hospitals." In a country that has yet to determine whether access to basic medical care is a right or an earned privilege, America’s public hospitals bear the burden of that indecision, writes King. “The historic bond between these hospitals and the governments that gave them birth is being challenged in an era of fiscal austerity and reliance on marketplace solutions to health care spending. That is especially so in those states whose hostility to the federal government has caused them to forgo billions of dollars in funding offered under the Affordable Care Act that could have provided coverage for millions of newly insured poor,” King writes. The book traces the history and challenges at several large public hospitals around the country, “civic fixtures that once were the most important medical institutions in the community, but places now that Americans with good health insurance would rather avoid.” Yet, these places have a remarkable ability to survive and to adapt to the marketplace changes forced upon them. Through an examination of their unique history and incisive analysis of policy successes and failures, "A Spirit of Charity" reveals the remarkable story of why public hospitals matter and why they should play a more prominent role in our public policy discussions.
language: English
title: A Spirit of Charity: Restoring the Bond between America and Its Public Hospitals
publisher: Secant Publishing