How partisanship, polarization, and medical authority stand in the way of evidence-based medicine The U.S. medical system is touted as the most advanced in the world, yet many common treatments are not based on sound science. Unhealthy Politics sheds new light on why the government's response to this troubling situation has been so inadequate, and why efforts to improve the evidence base of U.S. medicine continue to cause so much political controversy. This critically important book paints a portrait of a medical industry with vast influence over which procedures and treatments get adopted, and a public burdened by the rising costs of health care yet fearful of going against "doctor's orders." Now with a new preface by the authors, Unhealthy Politics offers vital insights into the limits of science, expertise, and professionalism in American politics.

Leading political innovation activist Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter bring fresh perspective, deep scholarship, and a real and actionable solution, Final Five Voting, to the grand challenge of our broken political and democratic system. Final Five Voting has already been adopted in Alaska and is being advanced in states across the country. The truth is, the American political system is working exactly how it is designed to work, and it isn't designed or optimized today to work for us—for ordinary citizens. Most people believe that our political system is a public institution with high-minded principles and impartial rules derived from the Constitution. In reality, it has become a private industry dominated by a textbook duopoly—the Democrats and the Republicans—and plagued and perverted by unhealthy competition between the players. Tragically, it has therefore become incapable of delivering solutions to America's key economic and social challenges. In fact, there's virtually no connection between our political leaders solving problems and getting reelected. In The Politics Industry, business leader and path-breaking political innovator Katherine Gehl and world-renowned business strategist Michael Porter take a radical new approach. They ingeniously apply the tools of business analysis—and Porter's distinctive Five Forces framework—to show how the political system functions just as every other competitive industry does, and how the duopoly has led to the devastating outcomes we see today. Using this competition lens, Gehl and Porter identify the most powerful lever for change—a strategy comprised of a clear set of choices in two key areas: how our elections work and how we make our laws. Their bracing assessment and practical recommendations cut through the endless debate about various proposed fixes, such as term limits and campaign finance reform. The result: true political innovation. The Politics Industry is an original and completely nonpartisan guide that will open your eyes to the true dynamics and profound challenges of the American political system and provide real solutions for reshaping the system for the benefit of all. THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICAL INNOVATION The authors will donate all royalties from the sale of this book to the Institute for Political Innovation.

In his acclaimed book American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips warned of the perilous interaction of debt, financial recklessness, and the spiking cost (and growing scarcity) of oil- warnings that are proving to be frighteningly accurate. Now, in his most significant and timely book yet, Phillips takes the full measure of this crisis. They are a part of what he calls "bad money"- not just the depreciated dollar, but also the dangerous attitudes and the flawed products of wayward mega-finance. His devastating conclusion: In its hubris, the financial sector has hijacked the American economy and put our very global future at risk-and it may be too late to stop it.

Vitality Politics focuses on a slow racial violence against African Americans through everyday, accumulative, contagious, and toxic attritions on health. The book engages with recent critical disability studies scholarship to recognize that debility, or the targeted maiming and distressing of Black populations, is a largely unacknowledged strategy of the U.S. liberal multicultural capitalist state. This politicization of biological health serves as an instrument for insisting on a racial state of exception in which African Americans’ own unhealthy habits and disease susceptibility justifies their legitimate suspension from full rights to social justice, economic opportunity, and political freedom and equality. The book brings together disability studies, Black Studies, and African American literary history as it highlights the urgent need and gives weight to a biopolitics of debilitation and medicalization to better understand how Black lives are made not to matter in our supposedly race-neutral multicultural democracy.

"The American Medical Association has played a key role during the past century in defining what health care is and how it is delivered in the United States. Now, as the nation tackles reform of the inefficient, costly, and often inaccessible health-care system that the AMA helped build, this powerful doctors' lobby once again is asserting its influence." "In The Serpent on the Staff, award-winning Chicago Sun-Times reporters Howard Wolinsky and Tom Brune present a critical dissection of the AMA, issue by issue, showing how the nation's best-known physicians organization has time and again acted more as protector of doctors' wealth than as guardian of the public's health. For the past decade Wolinsky has covered the AMA more aggressively than any other reporter in the country. In 1989 he teamed up with investigative reporter Brune to expose a financial scandal that led to the resignation of the AMA's chief executive." "Based on years of interviews and painstaking research into private and government files and internal AMA documents, The Serpent on the Staff reveals an array of disquieting decisions and public positions taken by the AMA: how it spends millions of dollars to influence politicians and sway public opinion to stall health-care reform; how it succeeded in turning Medicare into a financial windfall for doctors, and how it fights to keep it that way; how it delayed joining the crusade against smoking because of its long, close association with tobacco interests; how it attempts to block competing health professions, such as chiropractic and osteopathy in the past and nursing today; and how it fumbled the nation's public policy concerning AIDS." "As the AMA presses its public and backstage effort to shape health care at a time of historic reform that will affect generations to come, we owe it to ourselves to know where this organization really stands and whom it truly represents."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Governments fail to provide the public goods needed for development when its leaders knowingly and deliberately ignore sound technical advice or are unable to follow it, despite the best of intentions, because of political constraints. This report focuses on two forces—citizen engagement and transparency—that hold the key to solving government failures by shaping how political markets function. Citizens are not only queueing at voting booths, but are also taking to the streets and using diverse media to pressure, sanction and select the leaders who wield power within government, including by entering as contenders for leadership. This political engagement can function in highly nuanced ways within the same formal institutional context and across the political spectrum, from autocracies to democracies. Unhealthy political engagement, when leaders are selected and sanctioned on the basis of their provision of private benefits rather than public goods, gives rise to government failures. The solutions to these failures lie in fostering healthy political engagement within any institutional context, and not in circumventing or suppressing it. Transparency, which is citizen access to publicly available information about the actions of those in government, and the consequences of these actions, can play a crucial role by nourishing political engagement.

A small book with great weight and urgency to it, this is both a history of democracy and a clarion call for change. "Without drastic adjustment, this system cannot last much longer," writes Van Reybrouck, regarded today as one of Europe's most astute thinkers. "If you look at the decline in voter turnout and party membership, and at the way politicians are held in contempt, if you look at how difficult it is to form governments, how little they can do and how harshly they are punished for it, if you look at how quickly populism, technocracy and anti-parliamentarianism are rising, if you look at how more and more citizens are longing for participation and how quickly that desire can tip over into frustration, then you realize we are up to our necks." Not so very long ago, the great battles of democracy were fought for the right to vote. Now, Van Reybrouck writes, "it's all about the right to speak, but in essence it's the same battle, the battle for political emancipation and for democratic participation. We must decolonize democracy. We must democratize democracy." As history, Van Reybrouck makes the compelling argument that modern democracy was designed as much to preserve the rights of the powerful and keep the masses in line, as to give the populace a voice. As change-agent, Against Elections makes the argument that there are forms of government, what he terms sortitive or deliberative democracy, that are beginning to be practiced around the world, and can be the remedy we seek. In Iceland, for example, deliberative democracy was used to write the new constitution. A group of people were chosen by lot, educated in the subject at hand, and then were able to decide what was best, arguably, far better than politicians would have. A fascinating, and workable idea has led to a timely book to remind us that our system of government is a flexible instrument, one that the people have the power to change.

Sodas are astonishing products. Little more than flavored sugar-water, these drinks cost practically nothing to produce or buy, yet have turned their makers--principally Coca-Cola and PepsiCo--into a multibillion-dollar industry with global recognition, distribution, and political power. Billed as "refreshing," "tasty," "crisp," and "the real thing," sodas also happen to be so well established to contribute to poor dental hygiene, higher calorie intake, obesity, and type-2 diabetes that the first line of defense against any of these conditions is to simply stop drinking them. Habitually drinking large volumes of soda not only harms individual health, but also burdens societies with runaway healthcare costs. So how did products containing absurdly inexpensive ingredients become multibillion dollar industries and international brand icons, while also having a devastating impact on public health? In Soda Politics, the 2016 James Beard Award for Writing & Literature Winner, Dr. Marion Nestle answers this question by detailing all of the ways that the soft drink industry works overtime to make drinking soda as common and accepted as drinking water, for adults and children. Dr. Nestle, a renowned food and nutrition policy expert and public health advocate, shows how sodas are principally miracles of advertising; Coca-Cola and PepsiCo spend billions of dollars each year to promote their sale to children, minorities, and low-income populations, in developing as well as industrialized nations. And once they have stimulated that demand, they leave no stone unturned to protect profits. That includes lobbying to prevent any measures that would discourage soda sales, strategically donating money to health organizations and researchers who can make the science about sodas appear confusing, and engaging in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities to create goodwill and silence critics. Soda Politics follows the money trail wherever it leads, revealing how hard Big Soda works to sell as much of their products as possible to an increasingly obese world. But Soda Politics does more than just diagnose a problem--it encourages readers to help find solutions. From Berkeley to Mexico City and beyond, advocates are successfully countering the relentless marketing, promotion, and political protection of sugary drinks. And their actions are having an impact--for all of the hardball and softball tactics the soft drink industry employs to maintain the status quo, soda consumption has been flat or falling for years. Health advocacy campaigns are now the single greatest threat to soda companies' profits. Soda Politics provides readers with the tools they need to keep up pressure on Big Soda in order to build healthier and more sustainable food systems.

This is the first book to examine how effectively American and supranational EU governments have regulated innovative pharmaceuticals during the last 30 years regarding public health. It explains why pharmaceutical regulation has been misdirected by commercial interests and misconceived ideologies.

Do you feel like you're the only person at your office without an "I Voted!" sticker on Election Day? It turns out that you're far from alone - 100 million eligible U.S. voters never went to the polls in 2016. That's about 35 million more than voted for the winning presidential candidate. In this book, Christopher Freiman explains why these 100 million need not feel guilty. Why It's OK to Ignore Politics argues that you're under no obligation to be politically active. Freiman addresses new objections to political abstention as well as some old chestnuts ("But what if everyone stopped voting?"). He also synthesizes recent empirical work showing how our political motivations distort our choices and reasoning. Because participating in politics is not an effective way to do good, Freiman argues that we actually have a moral duty to disengage from politics and instead take direct action to make the world a better place. Key Features: Makes the case against a duty of political participation for a non-expert audience Presupposes no knowledge of philosophy or political science and is written in a style free of technical jargon Addresses the standard, much-repeated arguments for why one should vote (e.g., one shouldn't free ride on the efforts of others) Presents the growing literature on politically motivated reasoning in an accessible and entertaining way Covers a significant amount of new ground in the debate over a duty of political participation (e.g., whether participating absolves us of our complicity in state injustice) Challenges the increasingly popular argument from philosophers and economists that swing state voting is effective altruism Discusses the therapeutic benefits of ignoring politics--it's good for you, your relationships, and society as a whole.