A Government of Insiders: The People Who Made the Affordable Care Act Possible

Embark on a behind-the-scenes, guided tour of the characters and events that led up to the approval of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.In A Government of Insiders, translated to English from French, William Genieys discusses the influence of unelected "political elites . . .long-term insiders" (p.4), those who held positions in Congress and the executive branch of government, on the development of health care reform.He traces the evolution of "the key role of unelected governmental elites in the failure and ultimate success" (p. 1) of the Affordable Care Act, starting with the National Health Insurance project and ending with the Obama administration.On this trip, the reader is shown how these insiders "in the back offices of government, act[ing] as policy-formation professionals" (p.17) are the architects of our current health care system reform process.Using the results of two research projects funded by the French National Research Agency-Operationalizing Programmatic Elite Research in America and Programmatic Action in Times of Austerity: Elites