Review: The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care

In her accessible "citizen’s guide" to health care reform, Sally Pipes examines The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care and offers several patient-driven ideas for change. Pipes looks past the partisan rhetoric to explain, for example, what "46 million uninsured Americans" really means, why importing drugs cannot work, and how expanded Medicaid-type programs would make a bad situation worse.

Pipes, a Canadian native, is her most persuasive when she scrutinizes Canada’s and other nationalized medical systems. Relying on her extensive research and personal experience, she spells out why long waits, restricted access to new medications, and doctors on government payrolls are not the solution to America's problems.

In the debate over health care, Pipes has definitely chosen her side, championing free-market reforms such as allowing the interstate purchase of health insurance and revising the tax code to encourage individually-purchased, instead of employer-provided, insurance. But Pipes is no ranting demagogue. Her arguments are concise and supported by solid research as she tries deal rationally with an issue often freighted with emotion.

While aimed at policy-makers, The Top Ten Myths is lively enough for general consumption. Good reading for anyone interesting in going beyond the soundbites and understanding some of the details of health care reform.

House Moving!

We're moving house this weekend, so no internet for a while. Back soon!

Book Notes: A Summons to Memphis

Set in mid-Twentieth Century Tennessee, Peter Taylor's Pulitzer-winning A Summons to Memphis is a lovely novel of manners that teaches the importance of going beyond forgetting, beyond even forgiving, and trying to actually understand our parents. Wonderful.

Author of the Day: Cara Black

When I was compiling my French Connection list, I included books from a Paris-based mystery series by Cara Black -- part of the fantastic Soho Crime collection of mysteries set in foreign locales.

Black, who lives and writes in San Francisco, has done a masterful job with her Parisian novels. Amiee Leduc is half-American, smart, and feisty as all get out. She runs a computer forensic business, which gives her some investigative skills, but still makes her an amateur sleuth when it comes to solving murder mysteries. The books have solid, out of the ordinary plots with plenty of action and excitement. Black captures the mood as well as the sensory details of semi-contemporary Paris (several of the books, maybe all, are set in the early 1990s, about seven or eight years before the first book was published), but also provides vivid historic context when related to the mystery.

I read the first book in the series, Murder in the Marais, in preparation for meeting Black at a Mystery Writers' Conference I attended in 2005. Although the book had a few rough edges, I was intrigued. I then read the third book (by mistake -- I hate going out of order), found the rough edges smoothed considerably -- it is much a more professional product but kept the charm -- and I was definitely hooked. But I put off reading the others because I wanted to make them last, then unfortunately got distracted by other books, and have just now renewed my interest in catching up with the adventures of Aimee Leduc.

Those I have read are in red. Those on my TBR shelf are in blue.

Murder in the Marais

Murder in Belleville (reviewed here)

Murder in the Sentier

Murder in the Bastille

Murder in Clichy

Murder in Montmartre

Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

Murder in the Rue de Paradis

Murder in the Latin Quarter

Murder in the Palais Royal

Murder in Passy

Murder at the Lanterne Rouge

NOTE

Last updated April 19, 2012.

Books Read in 2005

This is the list of books I read in 2005, in the order that I read them. For an explanation of my rating system, see here.

Going over this list makes me remember this particular year of reading with surprising clarity. I was trying very hard to work my way through the Modern Library's list of Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century. I was also starting to focus on Booker Prize, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award winners.

Both goals were sidetracked for a while when I turned my attention to mysteries by the authors who spoke at a Mystery Writers' Conference I attended in the summer, during a period when I fantasized about giving up the practice of law to write legal thrillers.

And, finally, there is a clump of books near the end of the year that remind me of my favorite vacation in Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. It is wonderful how just the titles can pull up such crystal clear memories.

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan (4/5)

Gigi by Colette (on my French Connection list) (4/5)

Total Control by David Baldacci (3/5)

Some Do Not by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 1 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

No More Parades by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 2 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

A Man Could Stand Up by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 3 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

Last Post by Ford Maddox Ford (Vol. 4 of Parade's End) (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (4/5)

God's Little Acre by Erskine Caldwell (4/5)

Collected Short Stories by Erskine Caldwell (3.5/5)

The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye by A. S. Byatt (3/5)

A Room With a View by E. M. Forster (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

The Hearing by John Lescroart (3.5/5)

Critical Mass by Steve Martini (3/5)

Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (on the All-TIME 100 list) (4.5/5)

The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett (4/5)

The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (5/5)

The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett (4/5)

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (4/5)

The Travels of Jamie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (out of print; winner of the Pulitzer Prize) (3.5/5)

The Healing Power of Forgiveness by Ray Prichard (3/5)

Suspicion of Madness by Barbara Parker (3.5/5)

In the Moon of Red Ponies by James Lee Burke (3/5)

Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the Easton Press list of 100 Greatest Novels; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (3.5/5)

The Deepest Water by Kate Wilhelm (2.5/5)

Loving by Henry Green (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list)(3/5)

The Heat Islands by Randy Wayne White (2.5/5)

The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey (winner of the Booker Prize) (3/5)

Straight Life by Art Pepper (3/5)

Deja Dead by Kathy Reicht (3/5)

Maisie Dobbs by Jaqueline Winspear (2.5/5)

The Run by Stuart Woods (2.5/5)

Killing Floor by Lee Child (4/5)

San Francisco as You Like It by Bonnie Wach (3.5/5)

Murder in the Marais by Cara Black (3/5)

The Avenger by Frederick Forsyth (3/5)

Shell Games by Kirk Russell (3/5)

A Darker Place by Laurie King (3/5)

Special Circumstances by Sheldon Sielgel (3/5)

Moist by Mark Haskell Smith (3/5)

Caught Dead in Philadelphia by Gillian Roberts (3/5)

Misdemeanor Man by Dylan Schaffer (3/5)

Die Trying by Lee Child (3.5/5)

Folly by Laurie King (3.5/5)

Incriminating Evidence by Sheldon Siegel (3/5)

Death du Jour by Kathy Reichs (3/5)

The Smoke by Tony Broadbent (3/5)

I Married a Communist by Philip Roth (4/5)

The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith (3/5)

A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list) (4/5)

Darkest Fear by Harlan Coben (3/5)

In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead by James Lee Burke (3/5)

The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing by Melissa Bank (3.5/5)

Tishomingo Blues by Elmore Leonard (3/5)

Deliberate Intent by Rod Smolla (3/5)

Fugitives and Refugees by Chuck Pahaluk (3.5/5)

The Case Against Hillary Clinton by Peggy Noonan (3/5)

The Nanny Diaries by Emma Mclaughlin and Nicola Kraus (3/5)

A Strong Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list) (3.5/5)

Courting Trouble by Lisa Scottoline (3/5)

Vernon God Little by D. B. C. Pierce (winner of the Booker Prize) (1.5/5)

Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (4.5/5)

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

A Death in the Family by James Agee (winner of the Pulitzer Prize; on the All-TIME 100 list) (4/5)

Three Junes by Julia Glass (National Book Award winner) (3.5/5)

Last Car to Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke (3/5)

Last Orders by Graham Swift (winner of the Booker Prize) (4/5)

Code to Zero by Ken Follett (3/5)

Native Son by Richard Wright (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4/5)

State of Fear by Michael Critchton (4/5)

Under the Net by Iris Murdoch (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the All-TIME 100 list) (3.5/5)

An Obvious Enchantment by Tucker Malarky (3/5)

True North by Jim Harrison (3/5)

The Americans by John Jakes (3/5)

American Pastoral by Philip Roth (on the All-TIME 100 list) (4/5)

An Offer of Proof by Robert Heilbrun (3/5)

Kim by Rudyard Kipling (on the Modern Library's Top 100 list; on the Radcliffe Top 100 list) (4.5/5)

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively (winner of the Booker Prize) (4/5)

Running Blind by Lee Child (3/5)

Slander by Ann Coulter (3.5/5)

Amsterdam by Ian McEwan (5/5)

People of Darkness by Tony Hillerman (3/5)