letterboxd's review against another edition
4.0
- Anything that happens in Washington D.C. is EXTREMELY difficult to accomplish
- Lobbying efforts and backroom deals control most politicians and what they vote for
- The American healthcare system is so complex that the ACA was really difficult to implement and execute
- Despite the ACA’s shortcomings, it expanded coverage to millions of Americans
- Healthcare costs were soaring before the ACA and after; politicians would not vote against the money
- The website for the ACA was atrocious and it took almost years to get it running properly
- The ACA was a very polarizing issue in the United States that was often hated at the time, but is now, in 2023, largely a success
campbellsoup253's review against another edition
3.0
Read this because I felt like my degree didn’t cover the political aspects of healthcare very much. Anyways, I found it odd that the title/front cover of this book doesn’t mention the ACA at all since that’s all this book covers. The bill gets passed about midway through the book and it’s very long-winded towards the end. But I learned a lot about the healthcare system so can’t complain!
futurepres13's review against another edition
5.0
The fascinating account of the many behind the scene difficulties of creating a massive law and accompanying regulatory and executive scheme. This book would have been fascinating just for providing the background to any law and subsequent execution (which I had no idea about), including all the lobbying and horse-trading, but for a law as important as the Affordable Care Act it was even better. The author also points out a lot of the problems that still exist in the sphere (and lays most of them at the feet of overpaid hospital administrators, drug companies, and medical device manufacturers).
__karen__'s review against another edition
4.0
Brill, a Time magazine reporter, provides the play by play in the implementation of Obamacare including the disastrous national website rollout. Although the Obamacare administrative and political elements are interesting, I found the passages where the author related his personal experience hospitalized in New York on an emergency basis to be the most compelling sections of the book.
lizmart88's review against another edition
4.0
Excellent overview of the passage of health care reform from the promise in the campaign of 2008 to the online exchanges. Easy to read, interesting anecdotes.
tortue_abroad's review against another edition
3.0
Honestly more like 2.5 by the end. This book ended up being a slog to finish but I finally did it. I wanted to learn more about Obamacare and health care in the US in general to better understand the continued debate about it now and I did do that from parts of the book, but I think it could have been done much better. There are so many details in this book but when I felt like he had been talking too specifically about Washington and I wanted more of an outsider perspective, I found myself thinking ‘ok but not that one’ when he switched to a new perspective. He spent a lot (A LOT) of time talking about all the ways in the background that the website didn’t work, for instance, and this one new insurance company made by Jared Kushner. To be fair, he also explained a lot of what was broken about old health care plans and how their caps left people monetarily ruined, and a lot of time was spent on how prices are inflated. But it felt like the book was organized poorly so it was jumping around and when he got back to prices being inflated he had to give another example that was very much like the first just to show how pervasive the issue was. I got it; I agreed after the first few. So yeah, read selectively you can learn things that are useful, but it’s hard to avoid an avalanche of a lot of other stuff. Oh, also, he clearly had his own idea that he wanted health care to work and I get that anyone writing a book will have an opinion but I felt like he was beating me over the head with it. Especially at the end.
barrysweezey's review against another edition
A well-sourced, well reported and well written story of the passage of the ACA. His prescription for fixing health care? Kaiser Permanente.
xmastaflex's review against another edition
2.0
This was really well done until the author put his uninformed opinion, but more importantly, unsubstantiated claims and conclusions into the book right at the end. He provides no evidence on where he came up with his "solution." What a waste of my time.
barry_sweezey's review against another edition
A well-sourced, well reported and well written story of the passage of the ACA. His prescription for fixing health care? Kaiser Permanente.
colleenh's review against another edition
4.0
Most of this book is tediously written but I learned a ton about Obamacare and the health care system in the US.