Steven Brill Interviews With NPR About His New Book "America’s Bitter Pill"

Steven Brill has recently interviewed with NPR to promote and discuss his book, America’s Bitter Pill: money, politics, backroom deals, and the fight to fix our broken healthcare system. Steven Brill is, among other things, a journalist, the founder of Court TV and many regional legal newspapers, and a professor at Yale, but in his book he recounts his experience as patient in the healthcare system that required heart surgery.

Brill talks about the moral dilemma that delivering cost conscious healthcare brings. After spending part of his journalism career making “hospital presidents and hospital executives and health care executives and insurance executives sweat”, he recounts his sentiment after his diagnosis:

"At that moment I wasn't worried about costs; I wasn't worried about a cost benefit analysis of this drug or this medical device; I wasn't worried about health care policy," Brill says. "It drove home to me the reality that in addition to being a tough political issue because of all the money involved, health care is a toxic political issue because of all the fear and the emotion involved."

View the full interview to hear more about Brill’s experience bringing a confusing insurance bill to the insurance CEO, why he’s sympathetic to health insurance companies and his comments on the impact of the Affordable Care Act.