The People’s Hospital is the story of how Ben Taub Hospital strives to provide healthcare to Houston’s most vulnerable population, against the background of the chaos of American healthcare. By telling the frequently heartbreaking stories of patients who have had to battle their desperate financial circumstances as well as life-threatening illness, from Rogelio, a twenty-something, undocumented immigrant from Mexico recently diagnosed with kidney disease, to Roxana, a Salvadoran woman who appears in ER after a life-saving surgery resulted in her developing potentially fatal complications and many more. These are extraordinary stories in which doctors are tied up with complex moral questions about money versus healthcare, and patients manipulate their health conditions in dangerous ways in order to be eligible for life-saving treatment that they cannot afford.
