Awards
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Essential reading on timely topics. |
Staff Pick
Steven Brill's exposé of our staggeringly complex healthcare system should be required reading for all Americans. America's Bitter Pill clearly delineates the labyrinthine economic and political policies supporting the American healthcare industry, and provides a play-by-play account of the birth, construction, and consequences of the Affordable Care Act. The result is a nonpartisan rallying call for justice and reason that should engage, and enrage, us all. Recommended By Rhianna W., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
For readers of Double Down and This Town comes a fraught and fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”), the most significant piece of legislation of our time, from its inception to its implementation and beyond. Written by the author of the National Magazine Award–winning Time magazine article “Bitter Pill,” this epic political drama provides an unprecedented look at the broken U.S. healthcare system, as well as a sobering portrait of the Washington dysfunction that threatens to turn America into a failed state.
Review
"A superb guide to the maze of issues in American health care and health care reform...America's Bitter Pill is an energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy. It is full of insights, contradictions, apologias, flashes of anger, tidbits of history, extended stories of awe, compassion, some glibness and moments of brilliance. Above all, it includes fascinating reporting on how crucial decisions were made involving the drafting and implementation of the Affordable Care Act....It reminded me of a Bruegel painting....[Steven Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary — a thriller about market structure, government organization and billing practices." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"There is much to applaud about America's Bitter Pill. I suspect it will help shape our judgment of the Affordable Care Act and of the systemic failures that the legislation sought to address for a long time. It is, moreover, a damning account of the parasitic, corrupting interests slowly degrading the legislative process and of the feckless state of American bureaucracy. For its insights into our nation's fiscal, psychological and corporeal health — and for our own long-term social well-being — it is a book that deserves to be read and discussed widely by anyone interested in the politics and policy of healthcare." Los Angeles Times
Review
"[An] ambitious new history of the Affordable Care Act." Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker
Review
"Steven Brill's new book about the process of passing the Affordable Care Act is so meticulously reported, I found myself surprised by many details of a process I myself was deeply involved in....Brill has written an outstanding book about the administration's efforts to pass Obamacare. Now it is up to the administration to prove him wrong about what the legislation does to the trajectory of health-care costs." Peter R. Orszag, Bloomberg View
Review
"In a sweeping and spirited new book, America's Bitter Pill, journalist Steven Brill chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform. Brill, whose Time cover story last spring about costs of care caused quite a stir, has focused an unsparing eye on a countless number of politicians, bureaucrats, lobbyists, activists, and industry types. The result is an exacting and always readable examination of how a good idea turned sour, how the public got screwed, and who is to blame....[Brill's] book brims with unconventional insight delivered in prose completely uninfected by the worn out tropes and tired lingo of the Sunday shows....Compelling and revealing." The Daily Beast
Review
"Brill's book performs an admirable job of getting behind the scenes....[A] state-of-the-nation account of the broken U.S. healthcare system and Obama's partially successful attempt to heal it." The National
Review
"A landmark study, filled with brilliant reporting and insights, that shows how government really works — or fails to work." Bob Woodward
Synopsis
Journalist Steven Brill’s much-anticipated fly-on-the-wall story of the fight to pass and implement the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, following his award-winning Time special report chronicling the profiteering of the healthcare industry, America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry, larger than the entire economy of France.
About the Author
Steven Brill has written for The New Yorker, Time, and The New York Times Magazine. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, he also founded and ran Court TV, The American Lawyer magazine, ten regional legal newspapers, and Brill’s Content magazine. Brill was the author of Time’s March 4, 2013 special report “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” for which he won the 2014 National Magazine Award for Public Service. Brill also teaches journalism at Yale, where he founded the Yale Journalism Initiative to encourage and enable talented young people to become journalists. He is married, with three adult children, and lives in New York.