America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.The New York Times Americas Bitter Pill is Steven Brills acclaimed book on how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changingand failing to changethe rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. Its a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing Americas largest, most dysfunctional industry. Its a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine cover story continues, despite Obamacare. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation. But by chance Americas Bitter Pill ends up being much morebecause as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare policy rethinks it from a hospital gurneyand combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result: a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. Praise for Americas Bitter Pill An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.The New York Times Book Review A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system. Los Angeles Times A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.The Daily Beast One of the most important books of our time.Walter Isaacson Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossiblewritten an exciting book about the American health system.The New York Review of Books