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Details may have been changed to ensure patient confidentiality.

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You're listening to the nocturnous conversations.

I'm Emily Silverman.

We all know that health care is broken.

Some people support nationalized health care.

Others support Medicare for all or a public option. Others prefer to keep the federal government out of health care as much as possible and combine cash pay practices

with insurance for catastrophic situations only. These philosophical differences are the source of

much gridlock and antagonism in politics.

And too often, it seems like we're getting nowhere fast as health care costs continue to soar,

and the national life expectancy continues to sink.

But today's guest works at a safety net hospital in Houston, Texas, called Ben Top, whose unique

business model of public health care that is local may serve as inspiration for those of us

who believe health care is a human right.

Ricardo Nuala is a writer and hospitalist, and his debut book, The People's Hospital, Hope and Peril in American Medicine, is a love letter to Benthop Hospital.

Filled with stories of its faculties, staff, and patients, all mixed in with Ricardo's own experiences,

growing up with a physician father, finding his way as a doctor himself, and listening to Wilco and Arcade

Fire in the car on his way to work, which he mentions in his book and you'll hear me mention

at the top of the interview, and so much more.

Ricardo is an associate professor of medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, where he

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