Health Care Revolt: How to Organize, Build a Health Care System, and Resuscitate Democracy―All at the Same Time

The U.S. does not have a health system. Instead we have market for health-related goods and services, a market in which the few profit from the public’s ill-health.

Health Care Revolt looks around the world for examples of health care systems that are effective and affordable, pictures such a system for the U.S., and creates a practical playbook for a political revolution in health care that will allow the nation to protect health while strengthening democracy.

Dr. Fine writes with the wisdom of a clinician, the savvy of a state public health commissioner, the precision of a scholar, and the energy and commitment of a community organizer.

Michael Fine, MD, is a writer, community organizer, and family physician. He is the chief health strategist for the City of Central Falls, RI, and Senior Clinical and Population Health Services Officer for Blackstone Valley Community Health Care, Inc., and recipient of many awards and prizes for his pioneering work bringing together public health and primary medical care. He was director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, 2011–2015.

Bernard Lown is professor emeritus of cardiology at the Harvard School of Public Health and the developer of the direct current defibrillator. As a peace activist he cofounded the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, an organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985. He is the author of The Lost Art of Healing: Practicing Compassion in Medicine and Prescription for Survival: A Doctor’s Journey to End Nuclear Madness.

Ariel Lown Lewiton is a writer and editor based in New York. Her essays, stories, and criticism have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the National, Vice, the Paris Review Daily, Tin House online, and elsewhere. She has an MFA from the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program and is a contributing editor at Guernica magazine.