Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right

by Jane Mayer

She argued that the choice of private health care had saved her from spending the rest of her life confined to a wheelchair after a leg injury. She had initially been told that because she suffered from a rare disorder, she couldn’t risk surgery. But a specialist at the renowned Cleveland Clinic had found a successful treatment. She survived the surgery and was now an active mother of teenage twins. “Randy was convinced that if America had government health care like Canada or Great Britain, she would be dead,” a friend who asked not to be identified confided. It was a powerful testimonial, and the donors at the Koch seminar were deeply moved. But the Obama administration had never proposed government health care like that in Canada or Great Britain. Reached later, after the implementation of Obama’s Affordable Care Act, Donald Jacobsen, professor of molecular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, who cared for Kendrick, recalled her as a generous donor but dismissed as nonsense her argument that Obama’s health-care plan ever threatened treatment of the kind that she received. “I can assure you that ‘Obamacare’ did not diminish our research efforts in any way,” he said. “However, the sequestration efforts of the right-wing conservatives and their Tea Party colleagues have hampered progress in medical research. The National Institutes of Health is suffering greatly, and it is very difficult for all investigators to obtain funding. You can’t blame the ...