This indispensable guide to the Affordable Care Act, our new national health care law, lends an insider's deep understanding of policy to a lively and absorbing account of the extraordinary--and extraordinarily ambitious--legislative effort to reform the nation's health care system. Dr. John E. McDonough, DPH, a health policy expert who served as an advisor to the late Senator Edward Kennedy, provides a vivid picture of the intense effort required to bring this legislation into law. McDonough clearly explains the ACA's inner workings, revealing the rich landscape of the issues, policies, and controversies embedded in the law yet unknown to most Americans. In his account of these historic events, McDonough takes us through the process from the 2008 presidential campaign to the moment in 2010 when President Obama signed the bill into law. At a time when the nation is taking a second look at the ACA, Inside National Health Reform provides the essential information for Americans to make informed judgments about this landmark law.
John E. McDonough, DrPH, MPA is a professor of public health practice at the Harvard School of Public Health and director of the new HSPH Center for Public Health Leadership. Most recently, he was the Joan H. Tisch Distinguished Fellow in Public Health at Hunter College in New York City. Between 2008 and 2010, he served as a Senior Advisor on National Health Reform to the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Between 2003 and 2008, he served as Executive Director of Health Care For All, Massachusetts' leading consumer health advocacy organization. From 1998 through 2003, he was an Associate Professor at the Heller School at Brandeis University. From 1985 to 1997, he served as a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives where he co-chaired the Joint Committee on Health Care.
His articles have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Health Affairs and other journals. He has written three books, Experiencing Politics: A Legislator's Stories of Government and Health Care by the University of California Press and the Milbank Fund in 2000, and Interests, Ideas, and Deregulation: The Fate of Hospital Rate Setting by the University of Michigan Press in 1998. His new book, Inside National Health Reform, will be published in July 2011 by the University of California Press and the Milbank Fund.
He received a doctorate in public health from the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan in 1996 and a master's in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard in 1990.
