“A brilliantly crafted jeremiad for the modern age, one that all who fancy themselves political or medical leaders should read and take to heart.”
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. Jeremy White has taken the most tedious thing in the whole wide world — insurance — and explained the industry’s colossal failings in a fast-moving story and with easily understandable language, clarifying analogies, and the sharp, R-rated pen of a standup comic. Those who have been through any similar ordeal will be nodding along as if at a heavy metal concert.
At the center of his problem — getting his mother the post-stroke care she needs — stands a cruel public-private chimera called Medicare Part C, rebranded, as everything must be rebranded and marketed, as “Advantage Plans.” Similar to private prisons, these plans take public money and, under the false premise that the private sector surely is more efficient in everything, wind up enriching huge corporations, which are incentivized to deny treatment. This cynical business model banks on the fact that the vast majority of patients and their families would rather roll over and die in peace than spend their remaining days navigating the Byzantine halls of this public-private nightmare, with its peer-to-peer reviews, appeals, and almost inevitable further denials. But if a tiny fraction of patients had advocates like Jeremy and Edie White, this model would have collapsed long ago.
Along the way, White examines the widespread ramifications of corporate personhood under the law, a concept that would be laughable if the consequences were not so tragic. He also gives a good primer on a little-known fact, one that is at once outrageous and also was bound to happen: that major insurers have been using AI to make decisions about what treatments will and will not be covered. To tell a painful and tedious story in an entertaining way is no small feat. InHumana is not only a pleasurable read, but an important book.
Avrel Seale, author of With One Hand Tied Behind My Brain: A Memoir of Life After Stroke
“A rare survivor’s story that offers a human face for typically faceless insurance denials.”
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