Health care reform activist Kip Sullivan will discuss his new book, “The Health Care Mess: How We Got Into it and How We’ll Get Out of It” at Arise Bookstore Sunday, July 9th at 7pm. The event is free.

Sullivan is a leading national advocate for single-payer health care. His writings have appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Nation, In These Times, and the New England Journal of Medicine. Sullivan sits on the steering committee of the Minnestota Universal Health Care Coalition, and previously worked as an organizer and researcher for Minnesota Citizen Organizations Acting Together.

As Sullivan explains, the rapid deterioration of the American health-care system, and the debate about what to do about it, is generating a maelstrom of news stories, magazine articles, and books. But the average person finds it difficult to make sense of this blizzard of information. Because the health-care system is large and complex, and because the symptoms of its decline are numerous, comprehensive reports about the health-care crisis are extremely rare. Comprehensive reports in everyday language are nonexistent.

“The Health-Care Mess” was written to fill that void. It assumes the reader knows nothing about health policy. As Sullivan puts it, “The Health-Care Mess” is the book he wishes someone had given to him in 1986 when he, a community organizer, jumped into the cold, choppy waters of the health-care reform debate. At that time, he had no training in health policy. But in the course of studying the health-care system and explaining its problems to thousands of people, he has become a passionate health-care reform advocate and educator.

For more information, please contact Madeleine Baran at: madeleine.baran@gmail.com