America's Bitter Pill Summary

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Recommended: The legislative process and healthcare lobbying

The content-based book I chose to read was “America's bitter pill: money, politics, backroom deals, and the fight to fix our broken healthcare system" written by Steven Brill. In the book the author shows how the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was written, implemented, changing or failing to change from 2008 to 2014. Due to the fact that I want to become a healthcare administrator in the future, this book is an incredible resource. The United States healthcare system is a complete and total disaster; it has become the driver of social and economic instability for most American families. Insurance companies, pharmaceutical corporations and government bureaucrats filling their pockets from America’s largest, most dysfunctional industry. In 2004, the USA spent $3 trillion on healthcare, more "than the next ten biggest spenders combined: Japan, Germany, France, China, the United Kingdom, Italy, Canada, Brazil, Spain, and Australia" (Brill, p. 4). As Brill details, the healthcare system is dysfunctional because of the influence of the pharmaceutical, hospital and medical lobbies who influence decisions made by officials in the government (Brill, …show more content…

For example, when Steven Brill asked numerous questions the CEO Steven Corwin about his chargemaster (price list) and patient care in the hospital, the top executive explained everything in details (Brill p. 425-431). In addition, healthcare administrators work closely with doctors, pharmaceutical companies and other healthcare professionals to ensure that patients receive proper care. For example, Brill emphasizes that "The people on the top, the ones with the million-dollar incomes, were incented, at least according to the board's documentation criteria, to worry as much about patient as me as phlebotomist or my surgeon did" (Brill p.

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