Battle Over Health Care: What Obama's Reform Means for America's Future
Battle Over Health Care: What Obama's Reform Means for America's Future examines what was won and what was lost when the spoils were divided on the political battlefield. The same people who have made health care unaffordable, wasteful, and too often harmful were rewarded with an even larger canvas on which to paint America's health care future.
Health care reform was enacted against the backdrop of the Great Recession. The authors trace uncanny similarities between the health care industry and the banking and finance industry. Both sectors have price bubbles, toxic assets, too-big-to-fail syndrome, and they both privatize gains and socialize losses. With the Affordable Care Act, too-big-to-fail just got bigger. Americans' health care security in the coming years will be shaped by the country's economic security. Rather than reduce the cost of health care, the Affordable Care Act expands the health care industry's culture of dependency on the waning generosity of the public. By driving out inefficiency and wasteful spending, every American who needs medical care can receive it, now and for generations to come. |
