County: Life, Death and Politics at Chicago's Public Hospital

"County is a landmark book, brave, angry and indispensable not least because Ansell declared . . . Obamacare was no breakthrough." -Julia Keller, CHICAGO TRIBUNE "When it comes to the stories of his patients, many of whom he cared for over decades from clinic to hospital to funeral, Ansell soars." -Abigail Zuger, MD, NEW YORK TIMES "With the nation's focus on a national health-care policy providing quality medical services to citizens regardless of race, ethnicity, and income level, Ansell's exposé will shock and motivate readers to take a stand on the issue." -PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY "Ansell skillfully humanizes questions of health-care policy by describing real-life scenarios . . . his gift for making the connections between social forces and medical care, coupled with the vivid patient stories interspersed with trenchant critiques of the politics of health care, makes this work stand out." -LIBRARY JOURNAL COUNTY is a medical thriller that weaves a tale of one of the nation's most famous public hospitals, Chicago's Cook County Hospital and a young physician's coming of age as a doctor and health activist. We follow Dr. David Ansell and his colleagues as they learn medicine and deliver patient care in a decrepit, outdated facility. COUNTY covers more than thirty years-from 1978 when the author began his internship until 2001-when hundreds of former doctors and staff, many of whom shared Dr. Ansell's vision of resurrecting a hospital in critical condition, gathered to bid the iconic Beaux Arts building farewell before it was closed to make way for a new facility. County is about people-from Ansell's mentors, including the legendary Dr. Quentin Young, County's Chairman of Medicine, to the patients who flocked to the hospital to get the care denied them elsewhere because of poverty, lack of insurance and racism. It is a story about politics-from contentious strikes and demonstrations to battles over "patient dumping." Finally, County is a story of race, poverty and health care inequality in America and a clarion call for a single payer health program in the U.S. DR. DAVID ANSELL is Senior Vice President, Clinical Affairs, and Chief Medical Ofżcer at Rush University Medical Center.