Special Guests for July Book Club Meeting

As a bonus, we'll be joined by Richard Hodges, a long-time friend of Ennin, who contacted Ennin on our behalf.  Hodges was the Director of Ohio Department of Health and was the defendant in Obergefell v Hodges, the case which led the United States Supreme Court to rule in favor of same sex marriages. He has agreed to spend a few minutes giving us some background about how that all came about.

These guests will appear briefly during our regular book club meeting on Wednesday, July 28, 2021 at 7:00 PM via Zoom. To get the Zoom link, sign up for Book Club notices. The book for this month is The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town by Brian Alexander.

From Amazon:

By following the struggle for survival of one small-town hospital, and the patients who walk, or are carried, through its doors, The Hospital takes readers into the world of the American medical industry in a way no book has done before. Americans are dying sooner, and living in poorer health. Alexander argues that no plan will solve America’s health crisis until the deeper causes of that crisis are addressed.

 

Bryan, Ohio's hospital, is losing money, making it vulnerable to big health systems seeking domination and Phil Ennen, CEO, has been fighting to preserve its independence. Meanwhile, Bryan, a town of 8,500 people in Ohio’s northwest corner, is still trying to recover from the Great Recession. As local leaders struggle to address the town’s problems, and the hospital fights for its life amid a rapidly consolidating medical and hospital industry, a 39-year-old diabetic literally fights for his limbs, and a 55-year-old contractor lies dying in the emergency room. With these and other stories, Alexander strips away the wonkiness of policy to reveal Americans’ struggle for health against a powerful system that’s stacked against them, but yet so fragile it blows apart when the pandemic hits. Culminating with COVID-19, this book offers a blueprint for how we created the crisis we're in.