Sick and Systemic: Absurd Scenes from a Medical System That Works-Just Not for You (Volume 8) (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798190041101)

The system is still working. That is the problem.

In the eighth and final volume of Sick and Systemic, modern medicine once again demonstrates its extraordinary ability to turn obvious problems into strategic initiatives-and strategic initiatives into larger problems.

Every member of a clinic's care team is called "Doctor," leaving patients to guess who is qualified to treat what. Artificial intelligence applies for a medical license, while its developers claim accountability is proprietary. In the under-doctored Bay Area, patients attend an open house to compete for a primary care physician who is technically accepting new patients. A national task force fights overprescribing by making necessary treatment harder to obtain. Hospital executives use a dying patient's fear as leverage in a fight with his insurer rather than providing the honest, compassionate care he deserves.

Elsewhere, a medical student learns that due process is available only after completing a reflection assignment. An insurer claims that physicians who ask to be paid fairly threaten market stability. A surgeon discovers that a signed consent form does not mean whatever he wants it to mean. And deep inside the Department of Inboxology, clinicians confront refill emergencies, blurry photographs, dropdown-menu hazards, and the collective anxiety of several thousand portal users.

Finally, a physician prepares to leave traditional primary care, while a patient waits months to enter it.

These stories are fictional. The incentives, euphemisms, power imbalances, and administrative logic that underlie them are not.

Darkly funny, sharply observed, and uncomfortably plausible, Sick and Systemic, Volume 8 examines what happens when clarity becomes controversial, access becomes a product, consent becomes flexible, technology outpaces accountability, and essential clinical work is rebranded as efficiency.

For physicians, patients, nurses, trainees, healthcare leaders, policymakers, and anyone who has ever been assured that the system is working exactly as intended.

It is.

Just not for you.

Author: Arthur Lazarus
ISBN-13: 9798190041101
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 07/31/2026
Pages: 268
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.80lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.56d