Description:
A belly-of-the-beast examination of the medical-industrial complex that explores what it means to be human and eviscerates the farce of corporate personhood.
Brief description: Jeremy White is the author of InHumana: An American Healthcare Story. His mom's stroke came weeks after Jeremy independently published The Little Girl at the Bottom of the Picture: A Journey of Selfless Discovery, detailing how his wife, Edie, discovered her biological family in 2018 and the beautifully insane journey that ensued. Before the tenured cynic penned a hopeful book, Jeremy and Edie founded the award-winning satirical publication Red Shtick Magazine, as well as its digital progeny, The Red Shtick, which served as an $800 clue in the 2022 Jeopardy! Tournament of Champions. During that same time, Jeremy spent many years performing stand-up comedy, officiating high school and college football, and captaining a Mardi Gras krewe. A Cajun raised by a French-speaking family along the bayous of Terrebonne Parish, Jeremy earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering at LSU, where he met Edie. They've been happily married since 1992 and live in Baton Rouge with their cat, Waffles.
Review Quotes:
"InHumana: An American Healthcare Story lays bare the Darwinistic nature of America's for-profit healthcare system and its detrimental contradictions. Jeremy White poignantly illustrates the untold harm silently inflicted on countless patients and providers by forcing healers to operate in an unforgiving economic jungle."
- Thom Hartmann, radio host and New York Times bestselling author of The Hidden History of American Healthcare: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich
"In InHumana: An American Healthcare Story, Jeremy White delivers a searing, deeply personal account of his battle with the US healthcare system when his mother was denied life-saving coverage. Through raw testimony and meticulous research, White exposes the cold, profit-driven decisions of insurance companies that prioritize revenue over human lives. This compelling narrative blends emotional storytelling with sharp critique, shining a necessary light on a broken system that fails those it claims to serve. InHumana is both a tribute and a call to action-an unflinching reminder that real people pay the price when healthcare becomes a business. A must-read for anyone who believes in the power of reform and the dignity of care."
- That Librarian author Amanda Jones, 2021 School Library Journal Librarian of the Year
"If you have ever faced healthcare challenges or cared for a loved one, you will find this memoir with timely commentary on the current US corporate, governmental, and healthcare landscape both inspiring and empowering."
- Eleanor Bloxham, author and CEO, The Value Alliance
"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 pen of a standup comic. Those who have been through any similar ordeal will be nodding along as if at a heavy metal concert. 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
"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