Similar Stories to Review: An Ohio Hospital Reveals All The Ills Of Health Care on Bing News

“The Hospital: Life, Death and Dollars in a Small American Town,” by Brian Alexander (St. Martin’s Press) For the reader, it’s hard to avoid an abiding sense of sadness and shame that creeps in about halfway through “The Hospital: Life, Death and Dollars in a Small American Town,” when it becomes clear that a health care company’s insatiable drive for more money has overcome the high ideals of patient care, of ministering to people in their hours of greatest need. As author Brian Alexander shows, the history of the hospital in Bryan, Ohio, parallels America’s struggle to come to some consensus on how to provide health care. Again and again, Alexander finds people avoiding seeing doctors because they can’t pay for the service, skipping medications because they can’t afford them, struggling to overcome poor dietary habits and imprisoned in an economy of government aid and low-pay service jobs. Meantime, consultants are talking to hospital administrators about “data analytics” and “profit centers.” For Bryan, a town of about 8,500, the dragons gathered as long-time CEO Phil Ennen, a native son, tries to keep the town hospital independent. But the arithmetic is relentless. Hospital services’ charges rose 200% from 1998 through mid-2019, nearly four times the rate of inflation.Read more on NewsOK.com