h e a l t h

Price Of
Healthcare

SUZANNE CHESSLER CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Physician/
author offers
consumers
effective ways to
fight high costs.

A

colonoscopy had a strong impact on the direction of Elisabeth
Rosenthal’s life. It wasn’t the prep, procedure or clinical find-
ings that had the effect. It was the price.
Rosenthal, who entered the professional world as an emergency
physician and transitioned into working as a medical journalist,
began writing articles about the rising costs of healthcare, and she
ultimately decided the facts and the need for far-reaching patient
action merited a book.
An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and
How You Can Take It Back (Penguin Press; $28 hardcover) has become
the focus of a speaking tour around the country. She will speak for the
Metro Detroit Book and Author Society Luncheon Monday, May 15, at
Burton Manor Banquet and Conference Center in Livonia.
Rosenthal will be joined by four other authors introducing new
books: Chris Hayes (A Colony in a Nation), Stephen Hunter (G-Man),
Megan Miranda (The Perfect Stranger) and Dan Egan (The Death and
Life of the Great Lakes).
“My book begins by laying out for every patient how our health sys-
tem was hijacked by financial interests,” explains Rosenthal, a long-
time writer for the New York Times and now editor-in-chief of Kaiser
Health News (no connection to Kaiser Permanente or the Kaiser
Health System). She hopes that people will come to understand they
are not helpless in the face of our confusing and expensive healthcare
system.
The second part of the book is filled with news-you-can-use tips to
help navigate individual healthcare and questions we should be ask-
ing our public servants in Washington.

Rosenthal recalls how reading her insurance information after that
colonoscopy made such a dramatic impression. She had just returned
from 10 years as a correspondent in other countries, where she expe-
rienced solid healthcare firsthand along with tenable pricing.
Her colonoscopy charges originally were $10,000 but had been
bargained down to $9,000 by the insurance company. Rosenthal
believed most people would be glad to learn of such a deduction. She
also believes the $9,000 eventually will be passed along through wide-
spread higher deductibles and premiums.
With research, she saw the need for patients to partner with per-
sonal physicians to find lower costs on tests and procedures, negoti-
ate with providers for lower costs and complain to legislators about
high costs. Rosenthal shows you how to do it in the book.
“We shouldn’t be uncomfortable doing this,” Rosenthal says.
“Doctors need to help us at this tough time in American medicine.”

CAREER SHIFT

Rosenthal started writing for the New York Times after four years
of practicing medicine. Her decision came about because of three
circumstances. First, her specialty was internal medicine, and
rules were changing to require more emergency training. Next, her
second child was born, and that made overnight shifts difficult.
Third, emergency work had made her conscious of needs that
weren’t and aren’t being met — so it was a big draw to be able to
write about it rather than confront it one patient at a time.
After making the career change, she was covering Hillary Clinton’s
work to legislate healthcare reforms in the 1990s. That assignment

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April 27 • 2017

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