The American health care system is broken. Even though we spend more on health care per capita than any other high-income nation, the standard of care rarely equals the price. The prospect of universal care has been thoroughly politicized—and is seemingly anathema to conservative politicians—while the insurance industry’s stranglehold on services and costs ensures that millions of Americans incur significant debt every year related to even the most basic care. There has to be a better way, and four recent books offer illuminating perspectives on the current state of affairs as well as suggestions for where we can go from here.

In Random Acts of Medicine: The Hidden Forces That Sway Doctors, Impact Patients, and Shape Our Health(Doubleday, July 11), Anupam B. Jena and Christopher Worsham offer a perfect jumping-off point for any discussion of health and medicine in America. The authors, both physicians and researchers at Harvard, provide a panoramic overview of the hidden forces that influence how people are diagnosed, why certain courses of treatment are administered, and the traits that make the best specialists. Our starred review calls it “a well-documented, unnerving, fascinating study for anyone adrift in the American health care system”—which means caregivers and patients alike.

Another educative perspective on the system comes from Ricardo Nuila, a doctor and professor of medicine whose book, The People’s Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine (Scribner, March 28), “adds personal texture to one of the most divisive issues of our time,” according to our starred review. The author chronicles the experiences of six under- or uninsured patients through the labyrinthine medical and insurance systems. Along the way, Nuila, relentlessly compassionate, uncovers countless problems, creating a representative portrait of triumphs and failures across the health care spectrum. Indeed, his “complete, deeply personal dedication to his content and his exceptional command of prose allow him to translate the mercy, authority, and sense of urgency that patients want at their bedsides and citizens want in policy debates.”

Ilana Yurkiewicz, the author of Fragmented: A Doctor’s Quest To Piece Together American Health Care (Norton, July 11), is also dedicated to the urgent personal issues of her patients, with an eye toward how those stories fit within the broader systemic failures. She is an oncologist and physician at Stanford Medicine, and she is committed to creating a “preventative-focused system” in which patients are truly heard. At the same time, she is sensitive to the demands on doctors, and she leads us through a wide range of myths about the health care system from all angles, offering what our reviewer calls “plenty of food for thought for caregivers and medical professionals.”

The final book on the list ties together many of the themes of the first three. We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care (Portfolio, July 25), by Liran Einav and Amy Finkelstein, is a thoroughly researched takedown of the industry, but it is also a blueprint for a viable alternative approach—as opposed to mere patches and workarounds—to many of the systemic problems. In a starred review, we call it “a highly insightful examination of how to fix America’s woefully inadequate health care system.” Einav and Finkelstein are professors of economics, so their perspective is unique, and they debunk misinformation about so-called “socialized medicine” while arguing for “a fixed government health care budget to provide free universal coverage for basic services and the option to buy additional, supplemental coverage,” according to our critic. Refreshingly, the authors don’t slant either conservative or liberal. Rather, they lay out the possibilities of a system that could actually work. Yes, it would require the will to scrap the status quo and begin anew, but it would also guarantee what should be a fundamental human right.

Eric Liebetrau is the nonfiction and managing editor.