När president Obama om två år går till historiens Panteon eller till dess skräphög så kommer hans sjukvårdsreform att bli den fråga som historikerna flitigast kommer att diskutera. Hur kunde en så intelligent man missköta vad som trots allt var hans viktigaste reform, en reform som han ville driva igenom för att hylla sin mamma? Och hur kan det mäktiga USA ha västvärldens i särklass minst effektiva och dyraste sjukvårdssystem som lämnar miljoner amerikaner utan tillgång till läkarvård?
Och varför är det republikanska partiet så totalt emot allt vad sjukvårdsreform heter?
Journalisten Steven Brill har skrivit om den amerikanska sjukvården och hans America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System är en ögon öppnare för alla som är intresserade av dagens USA.
Zephyr Teachout i New York Times recenserar Steven Brills bok: ‘America’s Bitter Pill,’ by Steven Brill
What is this book about? Well, everything. It reminded me of a Bruegel painting, so full of minor characters that I made a chart to keep track. It is about the conflicts between President Obama’s economic policy team and his health care policy team. It is about the initial white paper from Senator Max Baucus that didn’t even include the “public option” of a government-run insurance plan.It is about the “chargemaster” system of American health care, whereby hospital administrators easily drive up costs because of their relative bargaining power over insurers and patients.
It is about a woman openly talking about how she and her husband — insured, but underinsured — had to create their own family “death panel” to weigh the cost of medical treatments that might keep him alive for another month. It is about Brill’s own open-heart surgery and how it affects his understanding of costs, and repeated visits to a group of well-funded entrepreneurs trying to create a “cool” new insurance company. Following his 2013 Time magazine cover story that inspired the book, Brill introduces us to Americans with no coverage, as well as those with inadequate coverage, like the 61-year-old bus driver whose slip in her yard and busted nose led to six hours in the hospital, six stitches and six years of medical bills.
Malmcolm Gladwell har också recenserat Steven Brills bok: The Bill
Steven Brill on how health-care reform went wrong. Och Steven Brill är aktuell med en omslagsartikel i Time Magazine: What I Learned From My $190,000 Surgery
