The New Health Care System

The New Health Care System was one part of a two-book project on the new health care law. The other part comes out today. It’s a book I worked on with Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader and President Obama’s original choice to lead the reform effort. The book, Getting It Done, tells the broader story of health care reform — how Congress tried to solve the problems, how politics affected what they did, and what we can expect in the years ahead.

We’re both hoping that the book’s approach — which weaves back and forth between policy wonkery and narrative storytelling — will give people a complete understanding of what happened and how much was on the line for everyone who uses health care. (In other words, everybody.) If you’ve already made up your mind on the law, because the public option or the “rationing” is all that matters to you, the book probably won’t change your mind. But if you’re not sure, or you were too busy to follow the whole story from beginning to the end, you might want to give it a read.

And if you’ve heard through some of the progressive blogs that the book has
some bombshell revelation about the White House and the public option, all I can say is, read that part for yourself and see what it actually says.

During the August break, I had the chance to give a book talk to an audience at Querencia, my parents’ retirement community in Austin, Texas. It was a valuable chance to hear what seniors are concerned about — especially in Texas, where your typical audience isn’t exactly wild about the law in the first place. There has been a lot of discussion about why seniors are so convinced that the law will be bad for them, even though it gives them new Medicare benefits (Chapter 9: Medicare Changes) and creates stronger regulations to improve the quality of long-term care facilities (Chapter 11: Long-Term Care).

What I found is that there are a lot of valid concerns out there, and it’s not based on the misinformation we hear so much about, like the widely debunked claims that the law creates “death panels” and rationing. Nobody challenged the part of the speech where I shot those claims down. Instead, people at the Querencia audience worried about whether the health care workforce will be ready for the new demands it will face; whether providers can really take any more cuts in Medicare payments; and whether there will be any actual, practicing medical professionals — not just academics — guiding the research on what medical treatments and procedures work the best.

It was a lot easier to answer some questions than others. The whole experience proves that people are willing to listen to the facts of the law, but even when they’re able (mostly) to sort fact from fiction, there are a lot of legitimate questions out there. The administration has plenty of work ahead.

Special thanks to my lovely wife, Elissa Leif, for editing the video through her Web video business, MiniMatters (www.minimatters.tv). And to my sister, Wendy Nather, for shooting the footage in crowded, less-than-ideal circumstances.

This is the Web site of The New Health Care System: Everything You Need to Know, the new consumer guide to the health care reform law. It will be released on July 20 by St. Martins Griffin/Thomas Dunne Books. It walks you through the different parts of the law, gives you background on why Congress did what it did, and helps you figure out how it might affect you based on your situation.

This Web site will be my way of keeping the book as up to date as possible, since some of the new programs are already starting and new details are being added all the time. I will update this blog as often as possible with updates on what’s happening with the law, what new rules are coming out, what’s about to kick in, and any new information that might add to what’s in the book.

Thanks for visiting, and please check back whenever you can.