A fair, rigorous take on health care reform in the United States.
An insider’s account of the historic passage of Obamacare.
Debut author Williams was a three-term Democratic state representative and the deputy to the insurance commissioner of Washington state, so he’s well-positioned to write a book about the creation, passage, and aftermath of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. He begins with a reflection on the contentious state of political affairs regarding health care: how did a powerful, idealistic Democrat-controlled Congress produce such an unpopular, unwieldy piece of legislation? And how was the original ideal of a single-payer system abandoned so quickly and thoroughly? Williams walks readers through the labyrinth of political compromises that ultimately diluted the original reformist spirit of the ACA and, in his view, rendered it a dubious achievement. His analysis is consistently rigorous, and it’s particularly strong when it turns to complex issues such as state-run health insurance exchanges; his insider knowledge of Washington state gives him a clear perch from which to appraise its experiments in making the ACA work. He also makes a credible, nonpartisan effort to pinpoint the law’s structural inadequacies and details how rampant dishonesty about the ACA undermined the public’s already shaky trust in government: “what sort of protection was a policy that, even after a tax subsidy toward premiums, required a $6,600 deductible before care could even be accessed?” Overall, Williams’ examination might prove too wonkish for average readers; not many will relish an extended discussion of “medical loss ratios,” for example. But for those who want a detailed investigation into the internal machinations of the ACA, this is a well-documented assessment. Williams can be reductive when he interprets the opportunistic motives of politicians with whom he disagrees. However, he proves to be a more than competent guide through the murkiest of legislative waters.
A fair, rigorous take on health care reform in the United States.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2015
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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