A well-researched, intelligent, and boldly alternative approach to health care reform.
A veteran physician provides a plan to revamp the country’s current state of medical care.
In Paguyo’s (Better Than ObamaCare, 2013) enterprising book, he considers American health care to be advanced and reliable, yet also “expensive, full of faults, wasteful” and “a total failure in providing healthcare for all Americans.” His complex proposal for change drills down to the core of the problems plaguing the system and offers an array of comprehensive solutions. These fixes, he asserts, should restore a sense of balance and accessibility to the country’s health care delivery system. The author maintains that the 2010 Affordable Care Act fails to properly address health care’s major issues and has made it “worse and more expensive.” He outlines (and endorses) a unique prototype with a list of guidelines and principles, such as program simplicity for the average consumer and a governmental medical “superfund” that would pool federal money for disbursement at the state level. The volume also clearly defines the functionality of each initiative as well as depicting how Paguyo’s health care plan would be funded from various government entities and who would oversee the official operation of its financial implementation and management. While it’s obvious the author has carefully analyzed his plan’s development, strategy, and delivery protocol, he is less effective in systematically describing how his revolutionary program would function within the current political and social environments and how his changes would be enacted. While Paguyo’s propositions are certainly daring and provocative, not all of them seem reasonable. His risky proposal for a state-by-state, two-stage bidding process becomes buried beneath an array of cumbersome requirements. In terms of comparative evaluations, the author cleverly presents an overview of already established national health care systems—such as those in Britain, Canada, France, Japan, and Switzerland—and how they’ve fared in effectiveness, durability, and popularity over time. Paguyo also contributes historical data on the vast evolution of U.S. medical care post-World War II. While the author’s ultimate vision is lucid and workable, his solutions become muddied when applied to the current state of health care: a lucrative, serpentine industry influenced by political and economic manipulation, congressional roadblocks, and lopsided patient care standards. Still, the author’s dogged efforts and passion are honorable and represent a physician who is truly motivated to improve how medical care is delivered in America.
A well-researched, intelligent, and boldly alternative approach to health care reform.Pub Date: Aug. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-64045-867-3
Page Count: 206
Publisher: LitFire Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 26, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.
Frey’s lacerating, intimate debut chronicles his recovery from multiple addictions with adrenal rage and sprawling prose.
After ten years of alcoholism and three years of crack addiction, the 23-year-old author awakens from a blackout aboard a Chicago-bound airplane, “covered with a colorful mixture of spit, snot, urine, vomit and blood.” While intoxicated, he learns, he had fallen from a fire escape and damaged his teeth and face. His family persuades him to enter a Minnesota clinic, described as “the oldest Residential Drug and Alcohol Facility in the World.” Frey’s enormous alcohol habit, combined with his use of “Cocaine . . . Pills, acid, mushrooms, meth, PCP and glue,” make this a very rough ride, with the DTs quickly setting in: “The bugs crawl onto my skin and they start biting me and I try to kill them.” Frey captures with often discomforting acuity the daily grind and painful reacquaintance with human sensation that occur in long-term detox; for example, he must undergo reconstructive dental surgery without anesthetic, an ordeal rendered in excruciating detail. Very gradually, he confronts the “demons” that compelled him towards epic chemical abuse, although it takes him longer to recognize his own culpability in self-destructive acts. He effectively portrays the volatile yet loyal relationships of people in recovery as he forms bonds with a damaged young woman, an addicted mobster, and an alcoholic judge. Although he rejects the familiar 12-step program of AA, he finds strength in the principles of Taoism and (somewhat to his surprise) in the unflinching support of family, friends, and therapists, who help him avoid a relapse. Our acerbic narrator conveys urgency and youthful spirit with an angry, clinical tone and some initially off-putting prose tics—irregular paragraph breaks, unpunctuated dialogue, scattered capitalization, few commas—that ultimately create striking accruals of verisimilitude and plausible human portraits.
Startling, at times pretentious in its self-regard, but ultimately breathtaking: The Lost Weekend for the under-25 set.Pub Date: April 15, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50775-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
BOOK TO SCREEN
4 Book Adaptations to Check Out In December
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of...
Everything you ever wanted to know about America’s favorite Mafia serial—and then some.
New York magazine TV critic Seitz (Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion, 2015, etc.) and Rolling Stone TV critic Sepinwall (Breaking Bad 101: The Complete Critical Companion, 2017, etc.) gather a decade’s worth of their smart, lively writing about New Jersey’s most infamous crime family. As they note, The Sopranos was first shot in 1997, helmed by master storyteller David Chase, of Northern Exposure and Rockford Files renown, who unveiled his creation at an odd time in which Robert De Niro had just appeared in a film about a Mafioso in therapy. The pilot was “a hybrid slapstick comedy, domestic sitcom, and crime thriller, with dabs of ’70s American New Wave grit. It is high and low art, vulgar and sophisticated.” It barely hinted at what was to come, a classic of darkness and cynicism starring James Gandolfini, an actor “obscure enough that, coupled with the titanic force of his performance, it was easy to view him as always having been Tony Soprano.” Put Gandolfini together with one of the best ensembles and writing crews ever assembled, and it’s small wonder that the show is still remembered, discussed, and considered a classic. Seitz and Sepinwall occasionally go too Freudian (“Tony is a human turd, shat out by a mother who treats her son like shit”), though sometimes to apposite effect: Readers aren’t likely to look at an egg the same way ever again. The authors’ interviews with Chase are endlessly illuminating, though we still won’t ever know what really happened to the Soprano family on that fateful evening in 2007. “It’s not something you just watch,” they write. “It’s something you grapple with, accept, resist, accept again, resist again, then resolve to live with”—which, they add, is “absolutely in character for this show.”
Essential for fans and the definitive celebration of a show that made history by knowing the rules and breaking every one of them.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4197-3494-6
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: Oct. 27, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 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.
