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
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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