"With almost 500 provisions, the extremely complex Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148)--popularly referred to as "Obamacare"--goes beyond the controversial individual mandate, small business incentive, Medicaid expansion, and insurance exchanges that are commonly discussed. However, in this title journalist Tate ignores or barely acknowledges other provisions such as the prohibition against discrimination on assisted suicide and provider payment options. Though he claims to go ."..beyond the sound bites and headlines to provide a detailed analysis of what it will mean for...American healthcare consumers," a number of Tate's repetitive statements sound biased against the Act or appear to emphasize the negative effect it may have on specific programs such as Medicare. Many statements remain undocumented by footnotes, endnotes, text notes, or bibliography, and others are one-sided. For example, stating that "healthcare costs in the United States have risen since ObamaCare's passage...," Tate fails to acknowledge that health care costs also rose significantly prior to the passage of this legislation. On the positive side, the implementation time line is particularly helpful and tables scattered throughout the book provide a nicely organized before-and-after display. Unfortunately, several tables appear to be incorrectly named and few are discussed within the text. For example Tables 7-4 and 7-5 bear identical titles, offer conflicting data, and are not discussed within text or captions. However, the material, including the tables, is well indexed. VERDICT While this work is timely, there are a number of similar books available, some of which are better designed for reference use. This one is best suited for a public library circulating collection that has additional titles that pick up other aspects of the new health care legislation.-" (Library Journal)
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