Author Event with Dr. Ricardo Nuila - The People's Hospital

205 West 6th Street,Georgetown TX 78626

28 March, 2023

Description

"A doctor and professor of medicine adds personal texture to one of the most divisive issues of our time... Nuila’s complete, deeply personal dedication to his content and his exceptional command of prose allow him to translate the mercy, authority, and sense of urgency that patients want at their bedsides and citizens want in policy debates. In the author’s hands, Ben Taub Hospital becomes a beacon of light that brings health care back to the realm of the personal, resisting the failures of partisan imagination and offering space for pioneering medicine and personal triumph. A compassionate, engrossing story of frustrated hopes and unlikely victories in American health care." —Kirkus Reviews About the book:Where does one go without health insurance, when turned away by hospitals, clinics, and doctors? In The People’s Hospital, physician Ricardo Nuila’s stunning debut, we follow the lives of five uninsured Houstonians as their struggle for survival leads them to a hospital where insurance comes second to genuine care. First, we meet Stephen, the restaurant franchise manager who signed up for his company’s lowest priced plan, only to find himself facing insurmountable costs after a cancer diagnosis. Then Christian—a young college student and retail worker who can’t seem to get an accurate diagnosis, let alone treatment, for his debilitating knee pain. Geronimo, thirty-six years old, has liver failure, but his meager disability check disqualifies him for Medicaid—and puts a life-saving transplant just out of reach. Roxana, who’s lived in the community without a visa for more than two decades, suffers from complications related to her cancer treatment. And finally, there’s Ebonie, a young mother whose high-risk pregnancy endangers her life. Whether due to immigration status, income, or the vagaries of state Medicaid law, all five are denied access to care. For all five, this exclusion could prove life-threatening. Each patient eventually lands at Ben Taub, the county hospital where Dr. Nuila has worked for over a decade. Nuila delves with empathy into the experiences of his patients, braiding their dramas into a singular narrative that contradicts the established idea that the only way to receive good healthcare is with good insurance. As readers follow the movingly rendered twists and turns in each patient’s story, it’s impossible to deny that our system is broken—and that Ben Taub’s innovative model, which emphasizes people over payments, could help light the path forward. About the author:Dr. Ricardo Nuila works as an internal medicine doctor and hospitalist in his hometown of Houston. He practices medicine at a safety-net hospital, where his experiences as a doctor give fuel to his writing. Dr. Nuila focuses mostly on health disparities, how policies affect real people, and the interface between art and medicine. He’s written for Texas Monthly, VQR, The New York Times Sunday Review, The Atlantic.com, and The New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Nuila also covered Hurricane Harvey and the COVID pandemic for The New Yorker. About the moderator:Local Austin author Antonio Ruiz-Camacho will moderate the conversation with Dr. Nuila. Ruiz-Camacho’s debut collection Barefoot Dogs won the Jesse H. Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction, and a Best Book of the Decade by Texas Observer. A National Magazine Award finalist, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Texas Monthly, Texas Highways and elsewhere. Born and raised in Toluca, Mexico, Antonio Ruiz-Camacho moved to the U.S. at the age of 31 and began to write in English at 35. He earned his M.F.A. from UT Austin’s New Writers Project.