Sick and Systemic: Absurd Scenes from a Medical System That Works-Just Not for You

Sick and Systemic: Absurd Scenes from a Medical System That Works-Just Not for You

An insurance authorization for a four-dollar antibiotic.
An "emergency" alert paired with the wrong diagnosis.
A physician responsible for a patient they never saw
An office visit incorrectly summarized by an artificially intelligent scribe

These are not outliers. They are ordinary moments in modern medicine.

In Sick and Systemic, physician and writer Arthur Lazarus invites readers into a series of sharply observed, semi-fictional scenes drawn from real conversations, real systems, and real consequences. Told through transcripts, mock guidelines, clinical vignettes, and staged encounters, these pieces reveal a healthcare system that functions with precision-just not always in service of care.

This is not a book about villains. It is a book about design.

The administrators follow policy.
The algorithms follow logic.
The clinicians follow the patient.

And somewhere in between, the system does exactly what it was built to do.

At once unsettling and darkly funny, Sick and Systemic exposes the painfully ordinary absurdities that shape everyday care-and asks a question that is becoming harder to ignore:

If the system is working, why does it feel like it isn't?

Because sometimes the problem isn't that health care is broken.

It's that it's working-just not for you.