A nightmare scenario of an insurance industry run amok that makes for often entertaining—and troubling—reading.
A hotshot hedge fund manager uncovers an insurance industry conspiracy in this gripping medical thriller.
A car accident sends Fort Myers, Florida, investment whiz Warren Thompson and his fiancee, Alex, to the hospital. Warren recovers quickly, but Alex succumbs to an infection and dies. Consumed by grief, he wonders whether the hospital staff did everything possible to save her. Staffers meet his pointed inquiries with ominous warnings not to look too closely at how treatment decisions are made. But Warren’s stubborn amateur sleuthing eventually leads him to the realization that USCare, the supposedly universal insurance program that’s a successor to the Affordable Care Act, doesn’t provide equal treatment for all. The wealthy are virtually guaranteed to receive the highest level of medical attention, while people on the lowest rungs of the insurance ladder would, according to one Harvard-educated doctor, “get better care at a Days Inn with a bottle of aspirin.” It turns out that physicians who deviate from the strict care guidelines are blackballed. Warren moves to sue insurance companies and expose the truth, but they’re willing to go to extremes to protect their business. Bollinger (The Pill Game, 2014, etc.) makes a few short leaps from the current real-life state of health care and insurance in America to create a sadly believable reality in which big business has nearly complete control over treatment decisions. Warren starts out as a self-absorbed businessman but evolves into an appealing protagonist as he learns to care about things other than making money. The supporting cast members are well-drawn, including Micah, a helpful nurse (and later, Warren’s love interest), and Sam Abrams, a “hippie doc” whose attempts to expose the truth about USCare cost him his career. However, the insurance industry villains are standard-issue bad guys in suits. The prose is also sometimes a bit verbose; trimmer sentences and paragraphs would have made this story zip along even faster. However, Bollinger delivers a clever, satisfying conclusion.
A nightmare scenario of an insurance industry run amok that makes for often entertaining—and troubling—reading.Pub Date: Dec. 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9848432-6-8
Page Count: 362
Publisher: JNB Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
