A Story of Modern Medicine In Brooklyn, NY
This fascinating portrait of a Brooklyn, N.Y., hospital is about much more than white coats and beeping consoles – it’s 21st-century America in a microcosm.
A new book, Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God and Diversity on Steroids, captures the whole spectrum of factors that determine what kind of medical care people receive in this country.
Respect – or rather, the lack of it – may be the single most persistent theme in “Hospital.” It’s hard to say that respect matters more to the people at Maimonides than money, because in this market economy, money is increasingly the only way we measure worth. A former chair of orthopedics says that he fell out with Brier because he wanted to give priority in the waiting rooms to patients who paid out of pocket or who had full insurance: “People who pay for health care don’t want to sit in a room with fifty people. They want to be seen in a timely manner. I think that’s very reasonable.”