317 - Book Club—Jonathan Cohn and The Ten Year War: Obamacare and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2021
⏱️ 25 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Affordable Care Act was meant to bring the US into alignment with every other developed country in offering universal health coverage. Author Jonathan Cohn joins Dr. Josh Sharfstein to talk about how a health care law that has been debated since the 1930s finally gained traction under Obama and insured millions of people with serious health conditions, and yet leaves so much undone. The Affordable Care Act is a story of just how hard policy change in the US can be. Note: You do not have to have read Cohn's book to enjoy this conversation.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Season 3, a Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. |
| 0:12.3 | I'm Josh Sharfstein, Vice Dean for Public Health Practice and Community Engagement, and a former secretary of Maryland's Health Department. |
| 0:19.6 | Our goal is to bring scientific evidence |
| 0:22.4 | and experience to the public health news of the day through informative interviews with scientists, |
| 0:27.8 | community leaders, policy experts, public health officials, clinicians, and more. If you have ideas |
| 0:34.4 | or questions for us to cover, please email us at public health question |
| 0:38.7 | at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:41.1 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:47.1 | Today, it's the Public Health On Call Book Club, and I speak to a friend and author, Jonathan |
| 0:53.3 | Cohn, about his new book, The Ten Year War, |
| 0:57.2 | Obamacare, and the Unfinished Crusade for Universal Coverage. What have we learned from all the |
| 1:03.0 | battles over this law? Let's listen. Jonathan Cohn, it is good for you to be here on the podcast to |
| 1:10.7 | talk about your new book, The Ten Year War. |
| 1:14.0 | This is about the Affordable Care Act. |
| 1:16.6 | And my first question is, why write an entire book on one law? |
| 1:22.1 | Well, for two reasons. |
| 1:23.4 | First of all, for those who don't remember prior to 2010 and implementation of the Affordable Care Act, |
| 1:30.8 | every other developed country on the planet has universal coverage. |
| 1:34.9 | You're born, you get health insurance, it's part of the deal. |
| 1:37.4 | The United States has never had that. |
| 1:39.3 | We did create that for the elderly with Medicare in 1965, but we've been trying as a country, or at least some |
| 1:45.5 | people in the United States, have been trying to get there, to get a universal coverage system. |
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