Download or read book The Dysfunctional Politics of the Affordable Care Act written by Greg M. Shaw and published by Praeger. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While analyzing the contentious debate over health care reform, this study also challenges the argument that treating medical patients like shoppers can significantly reduce health expenditures. This work focuses on the politics surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), explaining how and why supporters and opponents have approached the issue as they have since the act's passage in 2010. The first book to systematically examine public knowledge of the ACA across time, it also documents how that knowledge has remained essentially static since 2010, despite the importance of health-policy reform to every American. The early chapters explain why congressional Democrats designed the Affordable Care Act of 2010 as they did, clarifies some of the consequences of the act's features, and examines why Republicans have fought the implementation of the law so fiercely. The study then looks at how the intersection of economics and politics applies to the ACA. Finally, the book details what the public knows--and doesn't know--about the law and discusses the prospects for citizens gaining the knowledge they should have about the overall issue of health-policy reform.

Download or read book The Dysfunctional Politics of the Affordable Care Act written by Greg M. Shaw and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2017-05-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While analyzing the contentious debate over health care reform, this much-needed study also challenges the argument that treating medical patients like shoppers can significantly reduce health expenditures. This revealing work focuses on the politics surrounding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), explaining how and why supporters and opponents have approached the issue as they have since the act's passage in 2010. The first book to systematically examine public knowledge of the ACA across time, it also documents how that knowledge has remained essentially static since 2010, despite the importance of health-policy reform to every American. An important book for anyone concerned about the skyrocketing costs of health care in the United States, the work accomplishes three main tasks intended to help readers better understand one of the most important policy challenges of our time. The early chapters explain why congressional Democrats designed the Affordable Care Act of 2010 as they did, clarifies some of the consequences of the act's features, and examines why Republicans have fought the implementation of the law so fiercely. The study then looks at how the intersection of economics and politics applies to the ACA. Finally, the book details what the public knows-and doesn't know-about the law and discusses the prospects for citizens gaining the knowledge they should have about the overall issue of health-policy reform.

Download or read book America s Bitter Pill written by Steven Brill and published by Random House. This book was released on 2015-01-05 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • “A tour de force . . . a comprehensive and suitably furious guide to the political landscape of American healthcare . . . persuasive, shocking.”—The New York Times America’s Bitter Pill is Steven Brill’s acclaimed book on 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. It’s a fly-on-the-wall account of the titanic fight to pass a 961-page law aimed at fixing America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. It’s a penetrating chronicle of how the profiteering that Brill first identified in his trailblazing Time magazine 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. 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. Praise for America’s Bitter Pill “An energetic, picaresque, narrative explanation of much of what has happened in the last seven years of health policy . . . [Brill] has pulled off something extraordinary.”—The New York Times Book Review “A thunderous indictment of what Brill refers to as the ‘toxicity of our profiteer-dominated healthcare system.’ ”—Los Angeles Times “A sweeping and spirited new book [that] chronicles the surprisingly juicy tale of reform.”—The Daily Beast “One of the most important books of our time.”—Walter Isaacson “Superb . . . Brill has achieved the seemingly impossible—written an exciting book about the American health system.”—The New York Review of Books

Download or read book Obamacare Wars written by Daniel Béland and published by University Press of Kansas. This book was released on 2023-02-10 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not five minutes after the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law, in March 2010, Virginia’s attorney general was suing to stop it. And yet, the ACA rolled out, in infamously bumpy fashion, and rolled on, fought and defended at every turn—despite President Obama’s claim, in 2014, that its proponents and opponents could finally “stop fighting old political battles that keep us gridlocked.” But not only would the battles not stop, as Obamacare Wars makes acutely clear, they spread from Washington, DC, to a variety of new arenas. The first thorough account of the implementation of the ACA, this book reveals the fissures the act exposed in the American federal system. Obamacare Wars shows how the law’s intergovernmental structure, which entails the participation of both the federal government and the states, has deeply shaped the politics of implementation. Focusing on the creation of insurance exchanges, the expansion of Medicaid, and execution of regulatory reforms, Daniel Béland, Philip Rocco, and Alex Waddan examine how opponents of the ACA fought back against its implementation. They also explain why opponents of the law were successful in some efforts and not in others—and not necessarily in a seemingly predictable red vs. blue pattern. Their work identifies the role of policy legacies, institutional fragmentation, and public sentiments in each instance as states grappled with new institutions, as in the case of the exchanges, or existing structures, in Medicaid and regulatory reform. Looking broadly at national trends and specifically at the experience of individual states, Obamacare Wars brings much-needed clarity to highly controversial but little-understood aspects of the Affordable Care Act’s odyssey, with implications for how we understand the future trajectory of health reform, as well as the multiple forms of federalism in American politics.

Download or read book Controversies in American Federalism and Public Policy written by Christopher P. Banks and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This interdisciplinary collection presents a scholarly treatment of how the constitutional politics of federalism affect governments and citizens, offering an accessible yet comprehensive analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s federalism jurisprudence and its effect on the development of national and state policies in key areas of constitutional jurisprudence. The contributors address the impact that Supreme Court federalism precedents have in setting the parameters of national law and policies that the states are often bound to respect under constitutional law, including those that relate to the scope and application of gun rights, LGBT freedoms, health care administration, anti-terrorism initiatives, capital punishment, immigration and environmental regulation, the legalization of marijuana and voting rights. Uniting scholarship in law, political science, criminology, and public administration, the chapters study the themes, principles, and politics that traditionally have been at the center of federalism research across different academic disciplines. They look at the origins, nature and effect of dual and cooperative federalism, presidential powers and administrative regulation, state sovereignty and states’ rights, judicial federalism and the advocacy of organized interests.

Download or read book An American Sickness written by Elisabeth Rosenthal and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times bestseller/Washington Post Notable Book of 2017/NPR Best Books of 2017/Wall Street Journal Best Books of 2017 "This book will serve as the definitive guide to the past and future of health care in America.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Gene At a moment of drastic political upheaval, An American Sickness is a shocking investigation into our dysfunctional healthcare system - and offers practical solutions to its myriad problems. In these troubled times, perhaps no institution has unraveled more quickly and more completely than American medicine. In only a few decades, the medical system has been overrun by organizations seeking to exploit for profit the trust that vulnerable and sick Americans place in their healthcare. Our politicians have proven themselves either unwilling or incapable of reining in the increasingly outrageous costs faced by patients, and market-based solutions only seem to funnel larger and larger sums of our money into the hands of corporations. Impossibly high insurance premiums and inexplicably large bills have become facts of life; fatalism has set in. Very quickly Americans have been made to accept paying more for less. How did things get so bad so fast? Breaking down this monolithic business into the individual industries—the hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers—that together constitute our healthcare system, Rosenthal exposes the recent evolution of American medicine as never before. How did healthcare, the caring endeavor, become healthcare, the highly profitable industry? Hospital systems, which are managed by business executives, behave like predatory lenders, hounding patients and seizing their homes. Research charities are in bed with big pharmaceutical companies, which surreptitiously profit from the donations made by working people. Patients receive bills in code, from entrepreneurial doctors they never even saw. The system is in tatters, but we can fight back. Dr. Elisabeth Rosenthal doesn't just explain the symptoms, she diagnoses and treats the disease itself. In clear and practical terms, she spells out exactly how to decode medical doublespeak, avoid the pitfalls of the pharmaceuticals racket, and get the care you and your family deserve. She takes you inside the doctor-patient relationship and to hospital C-suites, explaining step-by-step the workings of a system badly lacking transparency. This is about what we can do, as individual patients, both to navigate the maze that is American healthcare and also to demand far-reaching reform. An American Sickness is the frontline defense against a healthcare system that no longer has our well-being at heart.

Download or read book Public Opinion and the Political Economy of Education Policy around the World written by Martin R. West and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-04-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparative analyses of the influence of public opinion on education policy in developed countries. Although research has suggested a variety of changes to education policy that have the potential to improve educational outcomes, politicians are often reluctant to implement such evidence-based reforms. Public opinion and pressure by interest groups would seem to have a greater role in shaping education policy than insights drawn from empirical data. The construction of a comparative political economy of education that seeks to explain policy differences among nations is long overdue. This book offers the first comparative inventory and analysis of public opinion and education in developed countries, drawing on data primarily from Europe and the United States.

Download or read book The American Congress written by Sara L. Hagedorn and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-06-24 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume thoroughly examines the operations and politics of the U.S. Congress. It guides readers to their own assessment of congressional politics and provides them with the basis for future reading and study of the subject. The American Congress: A Reference Handbook covers Congress from its inception to the present day, discussing the constitutional functions of Congress and how they have evolved over time. It presents a detailed discussion of 15 problems with which Congress copes, some associated concerns with those problems, and how they might be resolved. The book opens with a brief history of Congress and how it has changed over time. It discusses a series of problems and concerns, and proposed solutions to those problems. It also comprises nine original essays by other scholars and persons involved in congressional politics as well as profiles of the major organizations and actors involved. Data and documents and a detailed chronology of Congress from 1789 to 2018 allow readers to situate significant legislation within the history of Congress, while an annotated list of sources—the major books and scholarly journals concerned with Congress in addition to a number of feature-length films and videos—provide readers with vetted resources for further study.

Download or read book Medicare and Medicaid written by Greg M. Shaw and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-26 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medicare and Medicaid: A Reference Handbook provides an in-depth discussion of these two large government health insurance programs. It additionally addresses such related issues as health care, government spending, and socialized medicine. Many Americans hold conflicting views on how to pay for health care. They fear that government involvement will either undermine the quality of care or cost taxpayers too much. However, over the past half-century, hundreds of millions of Americans have come to rely on government health insurance because they are elderly, low-income, or both. Medicare and Medicaid: A Reference Handbook provides high school and college readers with a one-stop resource on these two government insurance programs. A background and history of the topic are followed by a chapter on problems, controversies, and solutions. Perspectives and profiles speak to current program strengths, political concerns, and problems. There is a strong focus on current program challenges and opportunities. Moreover, most of the government documents referenced in a dedicated resources chapter are produced periodically, with updates accessible online, so the book should enjoy an enduring shelf-life. The volume closes with a glossary and bibliography.

Download or read book The Affordable Care Act written by Tamara Thompson and published by Greenhaven Publishing LLC. This book was released on 2014-12-02 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to increase health insurance quality and affordability, lower the uninsured rate by expanding insurance coverage, and reduce the costs of healthcare overall. Along with sweeping change came sweeping criticisms and issues. This book explores the pros and cons of the Affordable Care Act, and explains who benefits from the ACA. Readers will learn how the economy is affected by the ACA, and the impact of the ACA rollout.

Download or read book It s Even Worse Than It Looks written by Thomas E. Mann and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acrimony and hyperpartisanship have seeped into every part of the political process. Congress is deadlocked and its approval ratings are at record lows. America's two main political parties have given up their traditions of compromise, endangering our very system of constitutional democracy. And one of these parties has taken on the role of insurgent outlier; the Republicans have become ideologically extreme, scornful of compromise, and ardently opposed to the established social and economic policy regime.In It's Even Worse Than It Looks, congressional scholars Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein identify two overriding problems that have led Congress -- and the United States -- to the brink of institutional collapse. The first is the serious mismatch between our political parties, which have become as vehemently adversarial as parliamentary parties, and a governing system that, unlike a parliamentary democracy, makes it extremely difficult for majorities to act. Second, while both parties participate in tribal warfare, both sides are not equally culpable. The political system faces what the authors call &"asymmetric polarization," with the Republican Party implacably refusing to allow anything that might help the Democrats politically, no matter the cost.With dysfunction rooted in long-term political trends, a coarsened political culture and a new partisan media, the authors conclude that there is no &"silver bullet"; reform that can solve everything. But they offer a panoply of useful ideas and reforms, endorsing some solutions, like greater public participation and institutional restructuring of the House and Senate, while debunking others, like independent or third-party candidates. Above all, they call on the media as well as the public at large to focus on the true causes of dysfunction rather than just throwing the bums out every election cycle. Until voters learn to act strategically to reward problem solving and punish obstruction, American democracy will remain in serious danger.

Download or read book The Politics Industry written by Katherine M. Gehl and published by Harvard Business Press. This book was released on 2020-06-23 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.

Download or read book When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics written by Robert P. Saldin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1960s, America's policymaking system has transitioned from one in which leaders like Lyndon Johnson could simply disparage the concept of budget projections to one in which policymakers consciously manipulate cost estimates. Paradoxically, the very safeguards put in place to thwart economically unsound legislation now cause chaos by incentivizing the development of flawed, even blatantly unworkable, policies. As Robert Saldin shows in When Bad Policy Makes Good Politics, the pathologies of the new system are illustrated by the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act and its role in aiding passage of President Obama's landmark health reform law. CLASS was supposed to bring much needed relief of America's dysfunctional long-term care system, but critics argued that its flawed design rendered the program unviable. However, what appeared to be a naïve proposal was actually a carefully framed policy designed to fit the rules of the game, particularly the Congressional Budget Office's cost-projection process. Although CLASS was destined for a "death spiral" requiring massive government bailouts, the CBO estimated it would save tens of billions of dollars. These official "savings" made CLASS an appealing add-on to the Affordable Care Act. But when the Obama administration later announced that CLASS was impossible to implement, America's long-term care system was left in crisis. This skillful examination of CLASS and the machinations of Congress provides insight into how the contemporary policymaking process really functions.

Download or read book The Ten Year War written by Jonathan Cohn and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-02-23 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jonathan Cohn's The Ten Year War is the definitive account of the battle over Obamacare, based on interviews with sources who were in the room, from one of the nation's foremost healthcare journalists. The Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare,” was the most sweeping and consequential piece of legislation of the last half century. It has touched nearly every American in one way or another, for better or worse, and become the defining political fight of our time. In The Ten Year War, veteran journalist Jonathan Cohn offers the compelling, authoritative history of how the law came to be, why it looks like it does, and what it’s meant for average Americans. Drawn from hundreds of hours of interviews, plus private diaries, emails and memos, The Ten Year War takes readers to Capitol Hill and to town hall meetings, inside the West Wing and, eventually, into Trump Tower, as the nation's most powerful leaders try to reconcile pragmatism and idealism, self-interest and the public good, and ultimately two very different visions for what the country should look like. At the heart of the book is the decades-old argument over what’s wrong with American health care and how to fix it. But the battle over healthcare was always about more than policy. The Ten Year War offers a deeper examination of how our governing institutions, the media and the two parties have evolved, and the dysfunction those changes have left in their wake.

Download or read book Advances in Comparative Historical Analysis written by James Mahoney and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-02 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book situates comparative-historical analysis within contemporary debates in political science and explores the latest theoretical and conceptual advances.

Download or read book Priced Out written by Uwe E. Reinhardt and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-09 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Uwe Reinhardt was a towering figure and moral conscience of health care policy in the United States and beyond. Famously bipartisan, he advised presidents and Congress on health reform and originated central features of the Affordable Care Act. In Priced Out, Reinhardt offers an engaging and enlightening account of today's U.S. health care system, explaining why it costs so much more and delivers so much less than the systems of every other advanced country, why this situation is morally indefensible, and how we might improve it.

Download or read book Democracy and Dysfunction written by Sanford Levinson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is no longer controversial that the American political system has become deeply dysfunctional. Today, only slightly more than a quarter of Americans believe the country is heading in the right direction, while sixty-three percent believe we are on a downward slope. The top twenty words used to describe the past year include “chaotic,” “turbulent,” and “disastrous.” Donald Trump’s improbable rise to power and his 2016 Electoral College victory placed America’s political dysfunction in an especially troubling light, but given the extreme polarization of contemporary politics, the outlook would have been grim even if Hillary Clinton had won. The greatest upset in American presidential history is only a symptom of deeper problems of political culture and constitutional design. Democracy and Dysfunction brings together two of the leading constitutional law scholars of our time, Sanford Levinson and Jack M. Balkin, in an urgently needed conversation that seeks to uncover the underlying causes of our current crisis and their meaning for American democracy. In a series of letters exchanged over a period of two years, Levinson and Balkin travel—along with the rest of the country—through the convulsions of the 2016 election and Trump’s first year in office. They disagree about the scope of the crisis and the remedy required. Levinson believes that our Constitution is fundamentally defective and argues for a new constitutional convention, while Balkin, who believes we are suffering from constitutional rot, argues that there are less radical solutions. As it becomes dangerously clear that Americans—and the world—will be living with the consequences of this pivotal period for many years to come, it is imperative that we understand how we got here—and how we might forestall the next demagogue who will seek to beguile the American public.