The Hidden History of American Healthcare

Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich (The Thom Hartmann Hidden History Series)

By: Thom Hartmann

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 3 hrs and 49 mins

Publisher's summary

Popular progressive radio host and New York Times best-selling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to establish affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.

"For-profit health insurance is the largest con job ever perpetrated on the American people - one that has cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives since the 1940s,” says Thom Hartmann.

Taiwan’s single-payer system enabled the country to implement a nationwide coronavirus test-and-contact-trace program without shutting down its economy, resulting in just seven deaths, while in the United States more than 350,000 have died.

Hartmann offers a deep dive into the shameful history of American healthcare, showing how greed, racism, and oligarchic corruption led to the current “sickness for profit” system. Modern attempts to create some kind of government healthcare have been hobbled at every turn - including Obamacare, which Hartmann regards as basically a sellout to the health insurance industry.

There is a simple solution: Medicare for all. Hartmann describes the extraordinary benefits it would provide the American people and economy and the steps we need to take to make it a reality. It is time for America to join every industrialized country in the world and make health a right, not a privilege.

©2021 Thom Hartmann (P)2021 Thom Hartmann

A must experience

This is one of our foremost economic and political problems. And frankly far too few voters have any understanding of how this system works and will be shocked into action when they really find out. I hope this happens before it’s too late for them.

interesting listen

He shared how the UK and Canada started their healthcare systems. The history of the US system was covered. He shared how Medicare forced our hospitals to desegregate. I had read this before but this author told me more about how they got it done.

Amazing Detail of US Healthcare

Great work to pull all this together! More Americans need to hear and understand their own history!

Timely

This is a message ripe for our time in history making. Are we ready to make our country user friendly?

Want the facts about the U.S.’s healthcare system? Read this!

First of all thank you, Thom Hartmann, for so clearly spelling out the truth of our “healthcare” system. I’m just afraid that the people who need to read/listen to this won’t. But lucky me: I’ve had the benefit of Mr. Hartman’s research and will share it with my friends, including a number of retired docs.

It gets nauseating listening to the AMA, insurance companies, and their lackeys in Congress bleat about the U.S. having the best medical system in the world every time there is a suggestion that it be spread to everyone. Oh, horrors! It might mean the dreaded socialism (has it ever occurred to anyone that our military is the world’s largest socialist organization???) is taking over our (selfish) country.

Just think: Insurance company executives deprived of their $23 million dream homes (that Thom reveals), or doctors retiring to gated communities. Sadly, their comfort comes at our expense. What you say? They’re supposed to be the protectors of human life. Well, the joke’s on us.

This is clearly laid out in Hartmann’s book. Please read it! Get the education that the “powers that be” would prefer you not have.

Great Book

This is a very informative audio book. I going to have get a hard copy or kindle copy of this book

A Must-Read For All Citizens

I'm a healthcare provider working in higher education. This book should be a part of the curriculum in health professions programs.

Highly Recommended

Great book and great insight into understanding our current inadequacies in healthcare, why our system profits off of despair, and how we can move forward evolving our country.

The hidden history of health care in American.

Excellent book. It should be part of a current events class in high school. A must read for all Americans.

Wonderful and enlightening

This was an eye-opening book and a call to action. Thom always frames difficult topics in easy to understand terms.