InHumana: An American Healthcare Story examines what happens when humanity’s most altruistic endeavor is forced to operate within the most Darwinistic of modern economic models. InHumana dissects the undead, human-made entities dominating the landscape of our contradiction-filled economic jungle. With pathos and humor, this timely examination of the medical-industrial complex from the belly of the beast explores what it means to be human and eviscerates the farce of corporate personhood.
InHumana is a brilliantly crafted jeremiad for the modern age, one that all who fancy themselves political or medical leaders should read and take to heart.
Avrel Seale, author of With One Hand Tied Behind My Brain: A Memoir of Life After Stroke
After a stroke hospitalized author Jeremy White’s seventy-four-year-old mom in August 2023, her only child and his wife were conscripted into a war with a soulless monstrosity that repeatedly tried to throw his mom’s life away for the sake of profit, and for completely contradictory reasons. More than five trying, life-changing months after her stroke, and the subsequent seizures that took away use of her right side, a federal judge officially ruled Jeremy’s mom the winner of that war. It’s a war that frighteningly few Medicare Advantage Plan members like Jeremy’s mom bother fighting when companies like Humana deny patients the doctor-recommended care they critically need.
• 3.4 million (7.4% of) prior authorization requests were denied by Medicare Advantage plans in 2022.
• Fewer than 10% of denials are appealed.
• 90% of appeals are successful.
• 33 million-plus Americans are enrolled in Medicare Advantage (more than half of all Medicare beneficiaries), with nearly half of them as members of plans offered by either Humana or UnitedHealthcare.
A Pulitzer-nominated series, as well as multiple class-action lawsuits, have exposed insurers like Humana and UnitedHealthcare for aggressively using unregulated artificial intelligence in denying patients critically needed care.
Despite failing to save taxpayers a dime in more than two decades of existence, the exploding half-trillion-dollar Medicare Advantage industry stands to totally replace traditional Medicare under President Trump, thanks to Project 2025 and its goal of completely privatizing the sixty-year-old federal program.
In this unflinching examination of an industry suddenly in the national spotlight, Jeremy White tempers his passionate, no-holds-barred takedown of the system with a genuine sense of humor and vulnerability. InHumana is a rare survivor’s story that offers a human face for typically faceless insurance denials.
Sean Illing, author and host of The Gray Area podcast