In “Sick,” Jonathan Cohn, a senior editor at The New Republic, lucidly shows how America’s system for financing medical care helps determine who gets proper medical attention — and who doesn’t. He tells this story through the experiences of ordinary people...

If you study other health-care systems in Europe and Japan, they all have managed to give insurance to everybody and at the same time spend less money than we do—so, right off the bat, they're accomplishing something that we're not. And while the health statistics vary, overall the medical care seems as good if not better. People cherry-pick certain cancers that the U.S. is better at treating, but I could pick out three or four other diseases, other cancers, or transplants, where other countries are better, including France. The high-end care in Paris is just as good as the best hospitals and doctors in New York City. And you always hear about waiting lines with universal health care—Britain has them, Canada has them. But other countries with universal health care don't seem to have systematic waiting-line problems. And France is one of those.