A solid account of a battle between government and industry.
The story of a lawsuit that highlighted bureaucratic errors in the health care field.
In his debut nonfiction book, Giovanis recounts his multiyear quest to get the federal government to correct a calculation issue involving hospital reimbursement rates that ended in a multimillion-dollar settlement in favor of the hospitals. The author, a hospital administrator–turned-consultant, opens the book with an overview of his personal history, then moves on to the central issue: He discovered an error in the formula being used to determine the amount of Medicare payments to hospitals, and when he notified Medicare administrators about the problem, they quietly updated the formula but refused to discuss making good on past miscalculations. Giovanis and his colleagues filed suit against the federal government and recruited hospitals to join the action, hoping to gather more than 100 plaintiffs; they ended up with more than 700 hospitals signing on, with Giovanis as the leader and decision-maker. As the lawsuit proceeded, the author’s wife, Jayne, was dying of cancer; this book is both a tribute to her and a celebration of a wrong righted. The author does a good job of highlighting the key elements of a complex, obscure topic with significant financial implications, providing calculation details for readers who may be interested but effectively aiming the majority of the text at a general audience. Although Giovanis is the hero of the narrative, he acknowledges the contributions of his colleagues; as a result, this is the story of a team effort rather than an individual crusade. The lawsuit’s outcome is evident from the book’s subtitle, but the author still manages to maintain tension throughout as he describes the many challenges and setbacks that the plaintiffs encountered. The book also offers some intriguing big-picture insights into the roles of career bureaucrats, the for-profit companies that make money from government programs, and the relationship between them. Overall, it’s a well-written story on a niche topic for an audience of nonspecialists and a compelling look at modern governance.
A solid account of a battle between government and industry.Pub Date: June 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-64-543511-2
Page Count: 216
Publisher: Amplify Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.
Helping liberals get out of their own way.
Klein, a New York Times columnist, and Thompson, an Atlantic staffer, lean to the left, but they aren’t interrogating the usual suspects. Aware that many conservatives have no interest in their opinions, the authors target their own side’s “pathologies.” Why do red states greenlight the kind of renewable energy projects that often languish in blue states? Why does liberal California have the nation’s most severe homelessness and housing affordability crises? One big reason: Liberal leadership has ensnared itself in a web of well-intentioned yet often onerous “goals, standards, and rules.” This “procedural kludge,” partially shaped by lawyers who pioneered a “democracy by lawsuit” strategy in the 1960s, threatens to stymie key breakthroughs. Consider the anti-pollution laws passed after World War II. In the decades since, homeowners’ groups in liberal locales have cited such statutes in lawsuits meant to stop new affordable housing. Today, these laws “block the clean energy projects” required to tackle climate change. Nuclear energy is “inarguably safer” than the fossil fuel variety, but because Washington doesn’t always “properly weigh risk,” it almost never builds new reactors. Meanwhile, technologies that may cure disease or slash the carbon footprint of cement production benefit from government support, but too often the grant process “rewards caution and punishes outsider thinking.” The authors call this style of governing “everything-bagel liberalism,” so named because of its many government mandates. Instead, they envision “a politics of abundance” that would remake travel, work, and health. This won’t happen without “changing the processes that make building and inventing so hard.” It’s time, then, to scrutinize everything from municipal zoning regulations to the paperwork requirements for scientists getting federal funding. The authors’ debut as a duo is very smart and eminently useful.
Cogent, well-timed ideas for meeting today’s biggest challenges.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781668023488
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
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