David Blumenthal and James A. Morone, "Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science" (Yale UP, 2026)

About this episode

The episode discusses the tumultuous decade of health care politics in America, focusing on the impacts of three presidents' actions on the system and science.

For nearly a century, every Democratic president—and many Republicans—entered office promising to restructure America’s health care system. Barack Obama finally broke through but, in the process, opened a tumultuous decade in which battles over health care dominated American politics. In Whiplash: From the Battle for Obamacare to the War on Science (Yale University Press, 2026), Dr. David Blumenthal and Dr. James A. Morone go behind the scenes to describe how three very different presidents—pursuing very different goals—maneuvered through the fraught politics of health care.President Obama ended the century-long quest for reform but ignited a screaming culture war that blazed into the Trump administration and blew up during the COVID epidemic. President Trump, facing the greatest health crisis in a century, denied and dithered. Then he directed a medical triumph in Operation Warp Speed. He and President Biden, facing the pandemic’s devastation, mounted the most successful anti-poverty program in eighty years. But in the tumult, Trump launched a shattering new political war, not over coverage but over science itself.Authoritative and gripping, this book describes the remarkable…

People in this episode

Host: Miranda Melcher

Guests: David Blumenthal, James A. Morone

Topics covered

• health care reform
• Obamacare
• politics
• science
• COVID-19
• Operation Warp Speed

Keywords

• health care
• Obamacare
• politics
• science
• COVID-19
• Trump
• Biden
• reform

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Yale University Press

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