Stories of Our Ailing System

This television documentary poignantly demonstrates the way in which the United States, one of the richest countries on the planet, still lets its sickest residents struggle to make ends meet as they battle to protect their lives.

In just an hour, this program from Fred Silverman, who previously tackled cancer in the award-winning “Living with Cancer: A Message of Hope,” outlines the history of health care in this country, the attempts by various presidents to reform it, and the inadequacies that still shame government officials and health care experts.

Despite all the expensive advances in medical care, good health remains off-limits to a staggering number of Americans. Nearly a third of the population--80 million people--are either without insurance entirely or have inadequate coverage.

Focusing on hospitals and communities in northern New Jersey, just outside New York City, the program provides telling glimpses of how these people--your next-door neighbors and friends--get by:

* Nonie Gilbert has had to fight her health plan to obtain care for her daughter with leukemia.

* Val Moretto, a retired truck driver, and his wife, Dottie, cut their pills in half and share them when money gets low.

* Alicia Facchino, an uninsured mother with multiple sclerosis, is forced to rely on her pre-teenage children to provide her basic daily needs.

The stories are framed by interviews with doctors, medical ethicists, economists and former health-care agency officials. The documentary traces the history of health insurance coverage in this country, the ways in which health plans could be more responsive and, finally, the tough choices that America must make as a nation so that it will no longer fail some of its most desperate citizens.

A CRY UNHEARD New Insights into the Medical Consequences of Loneliness By James J. Lynch.Bancroft Press, 345 pages, $26.95

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In 1977, James J. Lynch published “Broken Heart: The Medical Consequences of Loneliness,” in which he looked at the influence of loneliness on health. More than 20 years later, he has revisited the subject with new evidence that in this transient, uprooted society in which we live, those who are isolated from human warmth and contact suffer premature physical declines.

He contends that electronic communication has devalued human contact and weakened social skills, in part by substituting computer-based learning for the human contact of traditional teaching. The new cyber-society, he says, is fostering a generation of “detached, independent, self-sufficient, noncommitted individuals,” often social outcasts, who go on to lead unhealthy, detached lives.

Lynch offers scientific studies, complete with charts and statistics, to substantiate links among social isolation, heart disease risks and premature death. He also reviews cases of heart patients he’s helped by teaching them to relax, relate and respond better to the world around them.

Although the subject is intriguing, the textbook-like volume can be tough going and may not be picked up by many lay readers.