Posted in July 2025:
This is the real me, John E McDonough, anyone else or AI. I have been off this site for a good number of years now. This was my main posting site for about six years or so after the Boston Globe stopped its community blogging series, where the original Health Stew started in 2011 and ended in 2014. Most of the content from the original Health Stew is posted here, plus additional material after 2014. I had to slow down quite a bit after 2020 because of work demands and because I had started writing a new book (more on that below). Let me tell you what is up now.
First, I write articles/blogs/posts (whatever you want to call it) on the Substack site. It’s called Health Stew II. I try to post once or twice per week and have been pretty faithful since I started in August 2025. You can subscribe for free or you can pay on a voluntary basis.
Second, I have a new book coming out on August 11 from Johns Hopkins University Press. The title is: America’s Wrong Turn: US Healthcare in the Neoliberal Era. You can also order from Amazon Books, though if you purchase from Hopkins Press and use this code — HTWN — then you get a 30% price break. Here is from the Hopkins book description:
How can a nation with unmatched wealth and medical innovation also have the highest health care costs and the poorest health outcomes among its peers? In America’s Wrong Turn, John E. McDonough offers a compelling explanation for this troubling puzzle of contemporary US life and shows that this reality did not arise by accident.
Beginning in the later twentieth century, a powerful political and economic philosophy began to reshape the United States and continues to mold the institutions that govern health care, insurance coverage, and population health. Across four decades, the rise of neoliberal thinking elevated privatization, deregulation, and profit maximization as guiding principles for public policy. McDonough illustrates how these ideas influenced medical care at every level, altering government roles, accelerating consolidation, encouraging the financialization of once-mission-driven sectors, and shifting the US health system’s priorities away from patients and communities. The consequences of these changes include deepening inequality, eroded public health capacity, and a growing burden of medical debt.
Synthesizing history, policy analysis, and the lived realities of the American health system, McDonough reveals how a national commitment to economic freedom above all else set the stage for today’s dysfunctional health care system. Despite today’s crises, he also highlights emerging efforts that signal the possibility of a new direction, one based on fairness, accountability, and the restoration of health as a public value. America’s Wrong Turn offers a framework for understanding how the United States arrived at this moment and what it will take to create a system worthy of the people it serves.
https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53872/americas-wrong-turn
I hope this all makes sense to you. And if not, just reach out to me via email: jmcdonough@hsph.harvard.edu. Starting below is the OLD Health Stew site which you are welcome to peruse as much as you want.
Health Policy Commentary and Analysis
This site, Health Stew, provides a place where I occasionally write about important matters relating to health, health care, and health policy – mostly the U.S. and sometimes beyond our borders. I reprint articles and commentaries I write for other sources, mostly the Milbank Quarterly and Commonwealth Magazine. This is also a convenient way to connect with LinkedIn, Facebook, and other social media.
This site has gone through phases. Originally, Health Stew was a “community voices” blog among many on boston.com associated with the Boston Globe. That ended in 2014 when the Voices section was eliminated. Then I created Health Stew as an independent blog for my writings here and there.
I do this to add my voice to those seeking to advance a fairer, more just, more equitable, smarter, and better health care system for all Americans. I am not neutral when it comes to the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare). I was one of an army of Congressional staff who worked on writing and passing the law between 2008 and 2010. I wrote a book about the ACA called Inside National Health Reform to help explain the process to passage and the substance of this law. I understand health reform as a continuous process that never ends and, we hope, gets better.
I like Health Stew because I like stew and the image of ingredients coming together to produce a nutritious and tasty dish with an attractive aroma. My interests are wide, including access, quality, costs, public health, equity, politics, history, economics, psychology, sociology, law, finance, and more. If you want to catch up, you can check out all my earlier Health Stew posts by clicking here.
Enjoy and write to me at jmcdonough@hsph.harvard.edu
Health Stew 