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I'm David Remnick, and on today's Politics and More podcast, I talk with the writer and surgeon

Atul Gawande. Gawande worries that the repeal of the Affordable Care Act will lead to a decline

in patients seeking primary care and a rise in preventable deaths.

Atul Gawande is a practicing surgeon who also writes about medicine for the New Yorker, and his

articles have legs. A 2009 piece he wrote about the out-of-control cost of health care was cited

by President Obama while he was making the push for the ACA and passed around the West Wing.

So Atul is concerned about the repeal of the law, and in particular,

what happens if insurers can once again deny coverage of pre-existing conditions?

He wrote about that recently in a piece called The Heroism of Incremental Care.

You grew up in a family of doctors. Your parents were specialists, a pediatrician and a urologist, and you grew up with this all around you.

And you yourself became a surgeon.

I'd love to know why.

Since this piece kind of valorizes primary care doctors, I wonder why you decided to become a surgeon,

...