How American Healthcare Killed My Father Summary

David Goldhill, author of “How American Healthcare Killed My Father” describes himself as a businessman with no more expertise or connection with the United States healthcare system than any other patient with ordinary encounters. This is until his father entered a non-profit hospital in New York City with pneumonia. The end result of this hospital visit, which is not entirely uncommon for an elderly person, is an unexpected death and a son’s personal exploration of why it happened and what could be done to prevent this incident in the future. According to the Goldhill, his father entered the hospital and acquired sepsis within thirty-six hours of admission. Over the course of the next five weeks, which were spent in the hospital’s intensive care unit, the infections acquired were more than the his father could fight and quickly led to his inexcusable demise.
Shortly after his father’s death, Goldhill ran across an article in The New Yorker profiling the efforts of a Dr. Peter Pronovost in reducing the incident rate of hospital acquired infections similar to his
With what he found, he comes to a general consensus of how to go about repairing the current system by doing away with it completely. He, like many others, desires a move to a “consumer-driven” system similar to that of almost every other market with freedom of information and consumers in control of costs. In my opinion, the most effective and immediate means to implement his plan is through the use of Health Savings Accounts for individuals. With insurance in place to finance what it is truly intended for, catastrophic risk, he suggests that most all routine or non-catastrophic care be funded fully by the individual through the use of