Another volume of adroit, unclouded analysis.
A thorough overview of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, in its later years.
Williams (Compromised, 2015), a former three-term Washington state representative and a former deputy insurance commissioner, follows up on his debut effort, which charted the initial passage of Obamacare. Here, he offers an intelligent and thought-provoking examination of the health care legislation’s strategic implementation as well as its obstacles, including repeal efforts. The book focuses on the period from 2009 to 2017, winding through the act’s serpentine specifics. Along the way, Williams looks at the collective history of four presidential administrations and their advocacy for health care reform. He also stresses that the dismantling of the act has already begun, as opposing Republican legislators, as well as the Trump administration, continue to search for misinterpretations, workarounds, and loopholes; the 2017 GOP tax bill repealed the act’s individual insurance mandate starting in 2019. Readers who remain baffled by its complexities will appreciate the author’s plainspoken, thoughtful analysis, replete with descriptions of the varied tiers of coverage and benefits packages, and walk-throughs to help readers understand how things could radically change. Some chapters solely address dizzying political challenges or such vexing issues as prescription pricing, while others focus on the specific pitfalls of state-based exchanges, Medicaid expansion, and abortion coverage. Some of these sections could prove to be too dryly academic and technical for readers hoping for lay interpretations. Even so, Williams’ report is astute and relevant throughout, as he highlights the debate between those eager to preserve Obama’s legacy and those who support President Donald Trump, who has insisted that a reformed health care program will more efficiently serve the American people. Finally, the author opines on the future of the act amid a labyrinth of bureaucracy, insurer dominance, and political dissension.
Another volume of adroit, unclouded analysis.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-983684-71-5
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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