An engrossing, scholarly study that paints a sobering health care picture.
An economist offers an exhaustive condemnation of the American health care system in this nonfiction book.
With more than four decades of experience in health and retirement benefit plans, Schieber has an in-depth understanding of health care in America. In this voluminous, painstakingly researched work, he provides a historical perspective and current evaluation of the inner workings of the health care system, drawing on his own original explorations and other sources. His negative perspective is obvious: Part 1 is titled “Healthcare USA: A Cancer on the American Dream,” and Part 2 addresses “The Healthcare Provider Market and Exploitation of the Vulnerable.” In both parts, Schieber methodically dissects American health care, peppering readers with a dizzying array of facts and a wealth of statistical tables to support his argument. Part 1 examines health care in light of economic conditions from the 1980s through the 2010s. The controversial and highly politicized Affordable Care Act of 2010, aka Obamacare, does not escape the author’s critical eye. Schieber writes that while it did “improve access to care for many lower-income individuals and families,” the ACA “has provided little relief from excessive health care costs for people with employer-sponsored health insurance.” Part 2 delivers a bleak assessment of America’s health care costs at the provider level, taking into consideration hospitals, physicians, and pharmaceuticals. Schieber is at his best when referring to specific examples, such as his analysis of the development and pricing of insulin. In this part, the author notes that higher health costs are the result of more than just pricing issues; rather, he writes, they involve “widespread failure by almost every component” of the “health-industrial complex.” In Part 3, Schieber cites a 1975 study to dramatize the fact that the American health care system has basically not improved much since then. He recounts encouraging examples, such as Maryland’s testing of an alternative all-payer health program over five decades, as well as systems like Kaiser Permanente that are attempting to control costs. Still, it seems the primary purpose of this absorbing book is to indict American health care rather than propose specific solutions.
An engrossing, scholarly study that paints a sobering health care picture.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2023
ISBN: 9781667878942
Page Count: 428
Publisher: BookBaby
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.
Bearing witness to oppression.
Award-winning journalist and MacArthur Fellow Coates probes the narratives that shape our perception of the world through his reports on three journeys: to Dakar, Senegal, the last stop for Black Africans “before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage”; to Chapin, South Carolina, where controversy erupted over a writing teacher’s use of Between the World and Me in class; and to Israel and Palestine, where he spent 10 days in a “Holy Land of barbed wire, settlers, and outrageous guns.” By addressing the essays to students in his writing workshop at Howard University in 2022, Coates makes a literary choice similar to the letter to his son that informed Between the World and Me; as in that book, the choice creates a sense of intimacy between writer and reader. Interweaving autobiography and reportage, Coates examines race, his identity as a Black American, and his role as a public intellectual. In Dakar, he is haunted by ghosts of his ancestors and “the shade of Niggerology,” a pseudoscientific narrative put forth to justify enslavement by portraying Blacks as inferior. In South Carolina, the 22-acre State House grounds, dotted with Confederate statues, continue to impart a narrative of white supremacy. His trip to the Middle East inspires the longest and most impassioned essay: “I don’t think I ever, in my life, felt the glare of racism burn stranger and more intense than in Israel,” he writes. In his complex analysis, he sees the trauma of the Holocaust playing a role in Israel’s tactics in the Middle East: “The wars against the Palestinians and their Arab allies were a kind of theater in which ‘weak Jews’ who went ‘like lambs to slaughter’ were supplanted by Israelis who would ‘fight back.’” Roiled by what he witnessed, Coates feels speechless, unable to adequately convey Palestinians’ agony; their reality “demands new messengers, tasked as we all are, with nothing less than saving the world.”
A revelatory meditation on shattering journeys.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2024
ISBN: 9780593230381
Page Count: 176
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.
Documenting perilous times.
In his most recent behind-the-scenes account of political power and how it is wielded, Woodward synthesizes several narrative strands, from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel to the 2024 presidential campaign. Woodward’s clear, gripping storytelling benefits from his legendary access to prominent figures and a structure of propulsive chapters. The run-up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is tense (if occasionally repetitive), as a cast of geopolitical insiders try to divine Vladimir Putin’s intent: “Doubt among allies, the public and among Ukrainians meant valuable time and space for Putin to maneuver.” Against this backdrop, U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham implores Donald Trump to run again, notwithstanding the former president’s denial of his 2020 defeat. This provides unwelcome distraction for President Biden, portrayed as a thoughtful, compassionate lifetime politico who could not outrace time, as demonstrated in the June 2024 debate. Throughout, Trump’s prevarications and his supporters’ cynicism provide an unsettling counterpoint to warnings provided by everyone from former Joint Chief of Staff Mark Milley to Vice President Kamala Harris, who calls a second Trump term a likely “death knell for American democracy.” The author’s ambitious scope shows him at the top of his capabilities. He concludes with these unsettling words: “Based on my reporting, Trump’s language and conduct has at times presented risks to national security—both during his presidency and afterward.”
An engrossing and ominous chronicle, told by a master of the form.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2024
ISBN: 9781668052273
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Oct. 15, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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