Customer Reviews

State of the Heart: A Medical Tourist's True Story of Lifesaving Surgery in India

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I borrowed the book "State of the Heart" from a friend and, at about the same time, I saw the movie "Sicko". What an experience, like a double whammy to our health care system in America. "State of the Heart" reflects many of the disturbing situations found in the movie. The book could be used as a guide to someone who might need to do the same thing, but it was like hearing someone tell a story of an incredible experience with major consequences. I enjoyed it so much I just bought my own copy of it tonight. It is so interesting to see how the same scenarios from the movie happened to two people who took a chance to get the medical help they needed and ended up being in the news. This book is timely and a great pleasure to read.

Grace's book is at once the story of something all too ordinary -- the illness of a loved one -- and something extraordinary -- being pushed by a lack of options to travel halfway around the world in order to obtain treatment for that illness. The drama of her partner's sudden heart problem is itself the stuff of medical drama. But the true saga lies in the desperate search for a solution, made nearly impossible by the perverse way that we ration and pay for health care in this country, and the miraculous appearance of that solution in, of all places, India, where they ultimately traveled to have the surgery he needed, provided at a tiny fraction of the prohibitive cost that would have been entailed in getting care at home. Their story captures on a larger scale the urgency that any of us have felt when we realize that a friend or relative is ill, and we must ask ourselves, "They need help. What do I do?" Beyond the dimension of these individuals struggle against the odds, though, lies an incisive commentary on the current state of American health care, and paints in excruciatingly human terms the implications of being uninsured. The imagination and perserverence that Grace and Staab exhibit redeem this story as an inspiration. But those qualities also remind us how difficult it is to beat the odds that the system stacks against people like these, and by extension, how many of them do not make it, how many of them do not get -- through luck or pluck -- the care they need in time. In this, Grace offers (implicitly, without preaching) a searing critique of our peculiarly American practice of dangling "the best" medical care the world has to offer in front of our citizens, only to say to roughly a third of them, You Can't Have Any.

I thouroughly enjoyed reading about this and realized that its much more affordable to do it this way, i.e. combining travelling abroad and major surgery, than to help finance the huge insurance complex in this country.

This book is very insightful. It will help anyone who has a loved one that needs life saving medical care and cannot afford it in the United States. The option of going to India for high quality surgery is certainly a big decision to make and this book lays out how Ms. Grace and her partner came to the decision to do it. It also takes you on their journey from North Carolina to India and back again.

This book is also a story of two people who are a family, supporting one another, and the importance of having an advocate help someone navigate the crazy healthcare waters.

This book was a joy to read. I felt I was on the Journey with Maggi and Howard. Well written, I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes more info on global healthcare and how there are more options out there than you might think.

You won't believe the account of this experience. What happens when people are proactive about arranging with the hospital to pay out of pocket for an expensive surgery? What conditions do they encounter when they trek to India to have it done affordably? Where does the money go when we or our insurance company pays some 4000% of the cost of the same surgery done in another country? Warning, this book will spawn as many new questions as it answers. You won't find this stuff out anywhere else. Just read it.

WOW! Like any great piece of art, this book achieves the impossible - it speaks to a wide range of fundamental topics and raises profound questions, while simultaneously remaining very accessible, open to interpretation, and close to home. By staying within the context of her fascinating personal memoir, the author avoids political preaching and dry statistics. She doesn't tell you about the problems with our health-care system - she SHOWS you. She doesn't tell you what India was like - she takes you there. Come to your own conclusions about the developing world, about medical tourism, about our country's inability to take care of its citizens. But first, read this book.

What an engaging story. This took an enormous amount of courage to make such a life threatening decision and yet, what a travesty that Maggi and Howard had to go to these extremes to save his life. No one should have to go through what these two endured when they could have been with family and friends in such a time of need. This was an easy read and ended way too quickly.

Truth can be more exciting than fiction when you have a fascinating story with the added concern of possible death on the horizon. Add the elements of a third-world country setting, unfamiliar people and procedures, no one to share the anxiety of making important medical decisions, and the WAITING----! This book is a gripping story that just happens to be true. Incidentally, perhaps, it calls attention to the holes in our health system--not in the quality of service rendered, but in the availability of necessary preventative care in time, before an emergency occurs. "State of the Heart" is a great read while it makes you think!

Submitted by Mae Riegl

State of the Heart shines a glaring spotlight on our broken health care system here in the United States. To think that a $200,000 procedure here can be done for less than $10,000 in India is unbelievable.

As one of millions of Americans who can't afford health insurance, after reading this book I would have no problem going to India for care. In Howard's case, the treatment he received in the hospital there was much better than the treatment he got in the hospital here in the States, at a fraction of the cost.

This book also gives you a sense of the streets of India, the sights and sounds, so different from our own. It portrays the people of India as gracious, caring souls.

I can only hope if the situation ever arises, I will have a guardian angel like Maggi to help me through it!

I really enjoyed this book. It is very well written and I want to especially highlight the balance.

As someone who is very familiar with the "medical tourism" phenom, I have seen many a scoundrels poaching on unsuspecting patients. This book, though, is very careful about not over-generalizibg their personal story.