Remedy and Reaction

"Yes. It’s mostly focused on the last several decades, and relatively more attention is paid as we get closer to the present, including the most recent healthcare reform effort. Quite a lot of it is on the Clinton effort as well. It’s really about more modern development of health policy in the US and the policy rationale for the 2010 health reform law. It includes much of the politics that were in McDonough’s book but not the stories, because Paul Starr wasn’t sitting in on those kinds of meetings. If you want to read one book and learn something about the policy and the politics of health reform, this is a fine choice. It has all the arguments and all the nuances. As you know, I’ve been paying a lot of attention to this. There’s almost no issue about health reform policy and politics that I haven’t read about and seen debated. What really impressed me is how on every single issue that I’m familiar with, he said all the things that I knew and was expecting, and then he’d say one more thing that I hadn’t quite assimilated yet, or I hadn’t recognised. It was a nuance or an insight that went one step beyond and blew me away. There was always a little bit more from him that I hadn’t seen anyone else put on paper. Paul Starr just puts it all together better and more completely than I’ve seen anywhere else."