Cuts through the fog of health care complexity to offer a cleareyed picture of a fairer, more sustainable system.
A guide to the policy, politics, and potential of health care for everyone.
This book addresses significant questions that have bedeviled the American electorate for more than two centuries: Is health care a collective right? Should the government guarantee comprehensive coverage to its citizens under a single, publicly funded plan, or is a market-driven system more amenable to the public? El-Sayed, a physician, epidemiologist, and former health director of the City of Detroit, and Johnson, a resident physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, address these concepts as they apply to the "Medicare for All" proposition, uncovering its history and the nature of the policy through its design, implementation, and financing. The writing is passionately strong and candid, featuring a sense of balance and connect-the-dots scrutiny that conveys a well-rounded appreciation of the subject matter. The authors identify the key problems of the existing system, including expense, monopolization, lack of oversight, and the undermining of the doctor-patient relationship—all of which are the hallmarks of a system dominated by pharmaceutical and insurance companies and the hospital industry. The authors advance the notion that individual health care is crucial to our societal health, and they dissect the strengths and weaknesses of the Medicare for All proposal, which would offer comprehensive coverage, greater efficiency, and public accountability. There are few easy answers regarding its implementation, particularly in a politically charged atmosphere in which questions of abortion and immigration are on the front burner. Regardless, an awareness about the ins and outs of the Medicare for All system is a good start, and the authors demonstrate the need for a grassroots movement to generate a more informed electorate and thwart the disinformation and outright lies that permeate any discussion of health care. The book also features forewords by Bernie Sanders and Pramila Jayapal.
Cuts through the fog of health care complexity to offer a cleareyed picture of a fairer, more sustainable system.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-19-005662-9
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 20, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2020
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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