America's Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Backroom Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System

(Paperback)

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER America's Bitter Pill is Steven Brill's much-anticipated, sweeping narrative of how the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was written, how it is being implemented, and, most important, how it is changing-and failing to change-the rampant abuses in the healthcare industry. Brill probed the depths of our nation's healthcare crisis in his trailblazing Time magazine Special Report, which won the 2014 National Magazine Award for Public Interest. Now he broadens his lens and delves deeper, pulling no punches and taking no prisoners. It's a fly-on-the-wall account of the fight, amid an onslaught of lobbying, to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America's largest, most dysfunctional industry-an industry larger than the entire economy of France. It's a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his Time cover story continues, despite Obamacare. And it is the first complete, inside account of how President Obama persevered to push through the law, but then failed to deal with the staff incompetence and turf wars that crippled its implementation. Brill questions all the participants in the drama, including the president, to find out what happened and why. He asks the head of the agency in charge of the Obamacare website how and why it crashed. And he tells the cliffhanger story of the tech wizards who swooped in to rebuild it. Brill gets drug lobbyists to open up on the deals they struck to protect their profits in return for supporting the law. And he buttresses all these accounts with meticulous research and access to internal memos, emails, notes, and journals written by the key players during all the pivotal moments. Brill is there with patients when they are denied cancer care at a hospital, or charged $77 for a box of gauze pads. Then he asks the multimillion-dollar executives who run the hospitals to explain why. He even confronts the chief executive of America's largest health insurance company and asks him to explain an incomprehensible Explanation of Benefits his company sent to Brill. And he's there as a group of young entrepreneurs gamble millions to use Obamacare to start a hip insurance company in New York's Silicon Alley. Vividly capturing what he calls the "milestone" achievement of Obamacare, Brill introduces us to patients whose bank accounts or lives have been saved by the new law-although, as he explains, that is only because Obamacare provides government subsidies for "tens of millions of new customers" to pay the same exorbitant prices that were the problem in the first place. All that is weaved together in an elegantly crafted, fast-paced narrative. But by chance America's Bitter Pill ends up being much more-because as Brill was completing this book, he had to undergo urgent open-heart surgery. Thus, this also becomes the story of how one patient who thinks he knows everything about healthcare "policy" rethinks it from a hospital gurney-and combines that insight with his brilliant reporting. The result- a surprising new vision of how we can fix American healthcare so that it stops draining the bank accounts of our families and our businesses, and the federal treasury. From the Hardcover edition.

Reviews

A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.The New York Times

An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Steven Brill] has pulled off something extraordinarya thriller about market structure, government organization and billing practices.The New York Times Book Review

A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system . . .For its insights into our nations fiscal, psychological and corporeal healthand for our own long-term social well-beingit is a book that deserves to be read and discussed widely by anyone interested in the politics and policy of healthcare.Los Angeles Times

A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform. . . [Brills] book brims with unconventional insight delivered in prose completely uninfected by the worn out tropes and tired lingo of the Sunday shows.The Daily Beast

This is one of the most important books of our time. Through revealing personal stories, dogged political reporting, and clear analysis, it makes the battle over Obamas healthcare plan come alive and shows why it matters. It should be required reading for anyone who cares about our healthcare system.Walter Isaacson

Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossiblewritten an exciting book about the American health system.The New York Review of Books

[An] ambitious new history of the Affordable Care Act.Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker

Steven Brills new book about the process of passing the Affordable Care Act is so meticulously reported, I found myself surprised by many details of a process I myself was deeply involved in. . . . Brill has written an outstanding book about the administrations efforts to pass Obamacare. Now it is up to the administration to prove him wrong about what the legislation does to the trajectory of health-care costs.Peter R. Orszag, Bloomberg View

Brills book performs an admirable job of getting behind the scenes. . . . [A] state-of-the-nation account of the broken U.S. healthcare system and Obamas partially successful attempt to heal it.The National

A landmark study, filled with brilliant reporting and insights, that shows how government really worksor fails to work.Bob Woodward

Americas Bitter Pill is deeply impressive, an important diagnosis of what America needs to know if were ever to develop a healthcare system that is fair, efficient, and effective.Tom Brokaw

In Americas Bitter Pill, Steven Brill brilliantly ties together not only the saga of Obamacare, but also the larger story of our dysfunctional healthcare system and its disastrous impact on both businesses and ordinary Americans. In a gripping narrative, his thorough reporting is made all the more powerful by his own scary experience looking up from a gurney.Arianna Huffington

Author Bio

Steven Brill has written for The New Yorker, Time, and The New York Times Magazine. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School, he also founded and ran Court TV, The American Lawyer magazine, ten regional legal newspapers, and Brills Content magazine. Brill was the author of Times March 4, 2013, Special Report Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us, for which he won the 2014 National Magazine Award for Public Service. Brill also teaches journalism at Yale, where he founded the Yale Journalism Initiative to encourage and enable talented young people to become journalists. He is married, with three adult children, and lives in New York.