A Texas doctor’s love letter to ‘the People’s Hospital’ (from 2023)
About this episode
The episode discusses Dr. Ricardo Nuila's advocacy for a publicly-funded health system, highlighting the model of Houston's Ben Taub hospital.
We’re bringing back a favorite episode from 2023 that raises a question as relevant as ever: What if we had a decent, publicly-funded health system, available to everybody, with or without insurance? We’ve got one, says Dr. Ricardo Nuila. It’s where he works. And it could be a model for the whole country. Yes, really. That’s the pitch he made in his 2023 book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine . It’s a love letter to Houston’s Ben Taub hospital, and an argument for bringing Ben Taub’s model, efficient, innovative, and cheap, to the rest of the country. And if that seems unlikely in today’s political climate, well: Ben Taub’s wild origin story was plenty unlikely too. That story takes us to the 1960s, when Dutch novelist and playwright Jan de Hartog moved to Houston. He fell in love with the bustling, futuristic home of NASA and the Astrodome. But he also discovered the city’s dreadful underside: a neglected charity hospital where largely African-American patients are left to seek health care in unsanitary and unsafe, hellish, conditions. De Hartog…
People in this episode
Guest: Dr. Ricardo Nuila
Topics covered
- public health
- healthcare system
- hospital model
- community care
- health equity
Keywords
- publicly-funded health system
- Ben Taub hospital
- healthcare model
- Dr. Ricardo Nuila
- The People’s Hospital
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Ben Taub hospital, NASA, Quaker
Books & works: The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine
Places: Houston
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