Elections
Books about Biden: boring and ‘bomb’ in sales; author going back to writing about Clintons
NBC News’ Jonathan Allen and author declares he is going back to writing about the Clintons after his book about President Joe Biden flopped. “Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency” never made the Times best-seller list and so far has sold fewer than 10,000 copies since its release in March 2021, according to NPD BookScan, which is considered the gold standard of book sale measurement but does not include every sale, writes Politico.
Allen says he enjoyed a multi-stop national tour when he co-wrote a book on how Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. “Shattered: Inside Hillary Clinton’s Doomed Campaign.” Allen wrote the book with fellow journalist Amie Parnes, and sold more than 125,000 copies and landed on the New York Times best-seller list.
However, when it came to the book on Joe Biden, Allen didn’t even get the satisfaction of seeing a copy in stores, Politico notes; he most definitely didn’t get to go on a media book tour. “Biden never does anything interesting,” said Eric Nelson, the publisher of HarperCollins’ conservative imprint Broadside Books. “The Hunter Biden stuff has done pretty well, because he’s appropriately interesting. But Hunter Biden is not the president.”
Allen says he will steer clear of any more Biden books and go back to focusing on the Clintons, saying Biden “has tried to be kind of a drama-free president, certainly in comparison to his predecessor, and that makes it harder to write a book, both in terms of getting information and turning his story into one that is compelling for readers.”
Politico writes:
The few books that have been written about the Bidens have not exactly been flying off the shelves.
New York magazine writer Gabriel Debenedetti’s “The Long Alliance: The Imperfect Union of Joe Biden and Barack Obama” has sold fewer than 1,500 copies, according to NPD BookScan. The Associated Press’ Julie Pace and Darlene Superville’s “Jill: A Biography of the First Lady” has sold fewer than 2,500 and Chris Whipple’s “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House” and POLITICO’s Ben Schreckinger’s “The Bidens: Inside the First Family’s Fifty-Year Rise to Power” have each racked up fewer than 5,000 books sold.
That’s in contrast to the almost million copies that Michael Wolff’s Trump-focused “Fire and Fury” sold, according to NPD BookScan, and the more than 400,000 copies that Bob Woodward and Robert Costa’s “Peril” sold, among many other Trump-focused books on which publishers made a killing.
Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a longtime supporter of the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, is now acknowledging the unintended consequences of the healthcare legislation, particularly its impact on industry consolidation and rising healthcare prices.
Warren, who has been a vocal proponent of Obamacare, has recently had what the Wall Street Journal reported as an “epiphany” regarding the consequences of the healthcare law. In a letter addressed to the Health and Human Services Department inspector general, Warren, along with Senator Mike Braun of Indiana, expressed concerns about vertically-integrated healthcare companies potentially increasing prescription drug costs and evading federal regulations.
According to reports from Fox News, the bipartisan letter highlighted issues with the nation’s largest health insurers allegedly bypassing Obamacare’s medical loss ratio (MLR). According to Warren, these insurers, through vertical integration, have manipulated the system, leading to “sky-high prescription drug costs and excessive corporate profits.”
The senators detailed how conglomerates, like UnitedHealth Group, with ownership across various healthcare sectors, could inflate medical payments to pharmacies and, by realizing those payments on the pharmacy side, appear to comply with MLR requirements while retaining more profits.
Moreover, despite the Democrats’ argument that the MLR would benefit patients, it has incentivized insurers to merge with or acquire pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), retail and specialty pharmacies, and healthcare providers. This, in turn, has made healthcare spending less transparent, as insurers can allegedly shift profits to their affiliates by increasing reimbursements.
Warren, who has consistently voted against Obamacare repeal efforts, notably advocated for a “Medicare for All” proposal during her 2020 presidential campaign. Despite her prior support for the healthcare law, Warren’s recent concerns about its unintended consequences have raised questions about the long-term effects of Obamacare and its impact on the healthcare industry.
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