Convinced by the "librul" media that Jonathan Cohn's Sick was an Important Book, I plowed through it, all the way to the very end.
(And, Martha, what makes a book an Important Book? First, its subject must be Weighty Material. Second, it must reflect hours of Intense Research.)
Sick fulfills both requirements. Its subject is 1) the intertwined history of medical care and medical insurance in America and 2) the results of that history, i.e. the mess in which we currently find ourselves. Cohn's research shows up in individualized case studies of people who have fallen through the cracks in our current system and in lots and lots of facts and figures.
One fact/figure that jumped out at me was: "In the thirty years since the creation of Medicare, the proportion of Americans who 'trust(ed) the federal government to do what is right most of the time' had fallen from 69 to 23 percent." (page 108) Dang! I had no idea our disenchantment had grown that greatly or that rapidly. (Disenchantment? How 'bout cynicism? No! Disenchantment.)
All in all, I learned a lot from Sick in the week and a half it took me to read it. (The length of time wasn't totally the book's fault; Christmas busyness did play a part.) So was reading it worth the time invested? Dunna know. (OMG! Brigadoon has kidnapped me?) The jury's still out on the issue of time v. worth.
Last edited by humphreysmar; 12/18/09 04:24 PM. Reason: word choices
