Many of the problems of American health care are illustrated by Ricardo Nuila, MD, through stories about his uninsured or underinsured patients. Nuila wrote about them in his book "The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine" and lectured on the topic in Syracuse through Upstate's Center for Bioethics and Humanities. He sees patients at Ben Taub Hospital, the "safety net" hospital in Houston, and he’s an associate professor of medicine, medical ethics and health policy at Baylor College of Medicine.