Local author to release 3rd health care book

Rosemary Gibson, a Baldwin-born author and health care professional, is preparing to promote her third book at the end of this month.

Gibson, who went to Shubert School and graduated from Baldwin High School in 1974, describes her latest work, “The Battle Over Health Care: What Obama’s Reform Means for America’s Future,” as “a nonpartisan analysis of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” and adds that one of the book’s most important “take-aways is that nothing in the reform law stops the increase in health care costs, which are driving up insurance premiums.” (The book was co-written with Janardan Prasad Singh, an economist at the World Bank.)

After leaving BHS, Gibson went to Georgetown University and now lives in northern Virginia. In addition to writing about health care, she works at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, where she leads national initiatives to improve health care quality and safety. She is the author of two previous books, “Wall of Silence,” which she says “tells the story of medical mistakes and how to prevent them,” and “The Treatment Trap,” about “overuse of medical care that can cause more harm than good.”

Those two books can be found in the Baldwin Public Library, where they will soon be joined by her third. Gibson, whose mother lived in Baldwin for 50 years before she died recently, remembers the BPL as the place where she laid the foundations of her career. “I was an avid user of the Baldwin Public Library,” she recalls. “Every week my mother drove to the library, and I would take out four books and read them in a day or two.”

Of course, reminiscing about the library isn’t the only way Gibson maintains a connection to her hometown. The writer also says she enjoys “reading the Herald to stay in touch with Baldwin.”

In “The Battle Over Health Care,” Gibson and Singh shine a light on truths that have been hidden behind a raucous debate marred by political correctness on both sides of the aisle. Some of its highlights:

n Health care has caught Wall Street fever, and has its own price bubbles, toxic assets, conflicts of interest and too-big-to-fail syndrome.

n As the Supreme Court deliberates on the individual mandate, the court of public opinion may matter more.

n Nothing in the health care reform law stops the rise in private health insurance premiums.

n The reform law shifts the risk of individual bankruptcy to the bankruptcy of the federal government.

n In the behind-the-scenes deals struck with health insurers, drug companies and hospitals, how could Americans have gotten a better deal?