Healing The Sick Care System

I SPEND MOST DAYS TALKING TO PEOPLE WHO CARRY STORIES THEY NEVER EXPECTED TO TELL.

Insurance calls at 7 am. Pharmacy counters at 9 pm. A letter arrives that rewrites a future in 3 paragraphs of sterile language.

You learn quickly that policy lives far from the bedside.

I had the privilege of receiving an advanced copy of Gil Bashe's new book, "Healing the Sick Care System: Why People Matter," and proudly endorsing it. (Seeing my name inside felt less like a career moment and more like recognition of a shared grievances.)

With a requisite baseball cap atop his head, Gil writes from inside the machinery, like Chaplin in Modern Times. He refuses to pretend distance exists between leadership decisions and human consequences.

Employers. Insurers. Hospitals. Drug companies. Government. (We see you!) Each holds a piece of the wheel while patients feel every turn.

During my week in the hospital in January of 1996—after accidentally getting my last rites to me by a Priest (whom I dismissed by telling him I was Jewish)— 

I remember the struggles my parents endured debating coverage with apathetic corporations. Nobody used the word harm. Everyone used the word process. 

The outcome landed on a body anyway.

Gil names that gap directly. He places responsibility on people who sign approvals and budgets. Not on abstractions.

We sit at a national breaking point. America is in pain and people no longer whisper these stories. Instead, they compare notes in waiting rooms and group chats and at kitchen tables after midnight hoping their GoFundMe exceeds its goal so they don't dilute the baby formula.

Despite a completely unshameable health insurance industry, recognition spreads faster than denial letters now and that shift carries consequences for institutions that built comfort around silence.

Go pick up Gil's book this weekend. You'll be glad you did.

Welcome to 2026: The Year of the Patient where the sick shall inherit the ballot.

If this hits home, drop your story in the comments and tell me where you have seen it happen. How about a rage repost? Or tag a former colleague just for fun. Every impression pushes this in front of more people who deal with the same mess.

Are you new here? My condolences and my thanks. Follow along and stay loud with the rest of us. More voices means more pressure on a system that counts on silence.

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