Ricardo Nuila is a third-generation physician at Ben Taub Hospital, a busy public facility operated by Harris Health in the Texas Medical Center. An internal medicine specialist, he’s part of a staff dominated by residents and graduates of Baylor College of Medicine. And in his spare time, he writes. His compelling essays and new book,The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine (Simon and Schuster, 2023), focus on how many people get stranded in healthcare limbo—or needlessly lose their limbs or lives—in America’s cumbersome and costly healthcare system because of uncontrolled costs, overbilling, and greed promoted by health insurance companies and for-profit hospitals. Nuila thinks a good public hospital network across America could outperform even the most expensive private alternatives. He spoke to the Texas Observer about why.
You became a doctor partly through your roots: Your father is an OB-GYN and your grandfather is a physician in El Salvador. Why are you drawn to tell patients’ stories?
