A Dark Pandemic-Set Novel Reveals Why Our "Profit-over-People" Healthcare is Failing

From the Show: HER
Summary: For over fifty years renowned doctor and novelist Samuel Shem has been at the forefront of medicine, and a thought-leader in the push to make healthcare human again.
Air Date: 8/24/23
Duration: 10 Minutes
Guest Bio: Samuel Shem
Samuel Shem is a novelist, playwright, and a member of the faculty of the New York University School of Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center. His novels include Man's 4th Best HospitalThe House of GodMount MiseryFine, and The Spirit of the Place. He is coauthor with his wife, Janet Surrey, of the hit Off-Broadway play Bill W. and Dr. Bob, the story of the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous (winner of the 2007 Performing Arts Award of the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence), and We Have to Talk: Healing Dialogues Between Women and Men.
A Dark Pandemic-Set Novel Reveals Why Our "Profit-over-People" Healthcare is Failing
Best known as the author of the classic 1978 bestseller The House of God, Samuel Shem's new book OUR HOSPITAL (Berkley Hardcover; July 4th)  is a timely satirical takedown of our for-profit medicine system, and how it failed us in the pandemic. The House of God, dark medical satire, remains one of the most impactful novels of the last fifty years. Published in thirty languages, it is  credited with changing the way our society trains doctors and nurse and leaving a sustained impact on medicine. clarion call to take medicine from corporations and put it back in the hands of caregivers, OUR HOSPITAL is both a post-mortem on how hospitals handled covid; and a deeply readable and compelling continuation of The House of God characters.