Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State

Grow and Hide: The History of America's Health Care State by Colleen M. Grogan

The United States spends huge amounts on health care, but only achieves middling health outcomes. Despite heavy dependence on private companies, American government spends more on the health system than many countries that have fully funded government health systems. This book details the history of public healthcare and the way that the system has been steadily grown, while the true government involvement has been hidden.

At the outset, public health improvements were tied closely to sanitation improvements. Garbage collection and sewage handling were key areas of public health. Alas, this was al done in city governments, which were beholden to patronage systems. Doctors did not want to be beholden to random patronage employees, so worked to separate out public health from areas like trash collection. There was also a difference between "public health" and "individual health". This was deemed important and would lead to much of the "hiding" of true government health expenditures.

The health care system has continued with this grow and hide since. The healthcare industry is eager to take government funding when offered. The industry will even work to write regulations to their benefit. Then they will complain about state interference when it gets in the way. Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of expansion of this super expensive highly-regulated healthcare system. the current "privately funded" healthcare system has become a means where the maximum number of private entities can extract government money. Investors, such as private equity have realized this and swept in to get their share of the healthcare bonanza. All in all, ths US likely spends more public money on healthcare, yet also requires citizens to spend a huge amount of private money to top it off. With so many feeding at the trough, reform has become difficult, and attempts often lead to more benefits for the entrenched interests. (See Obamacare). The book does a great job of identifying the problem and its history, which alas, has few easy solutions.

Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs

The Aztecs are intriguing. This book has potential. However, it gets bogged down by details. In the audiobook, the native words are pronounced and then spelled out. This just seems to slow down the narrative. There is also too much time spent explaining the details instead of providing a narrative. The book attempts to be "popular", yet gets a little too stuck in academic detail.

The history also makes few attempts to go very far back in time. The focus is on the history that can be easily documented. Thus, it does not go very far back before the Spanish encounter. A great deal of the book focuses on the interactions with the Spaniards. There is an attempt to get at the "true" history, as opposed to what are likely many false impressions between the two societies that did not understand each other. There is also the challenging of teasing out the truth from narratives that were made to advance particular positions.

There is some coverage of the human sacrifice and heart extraction. The view in this book is that it was a fairly complex issue. Some of those sacrificed were essentially given a death penalty due to infractions (or being an enemy.) Later is became ritualistic and their became a demand for people to sacrifice to ensure positive outcomes (such as victory in war.) 

The Aztecs were of the Nahua culture and had a complicated relationship with the other people around. There were shufflings of leadership and migrations of peoples to the city. There was also plenty of intermarriage with plenty of love and hate to go around. The Spanish were able to find allies in their conquest. They also had the benefit of advanced technology and germs without immunity.