America is the only leading industrial nation that does not offer universal health care to all its citizens. It is slowly being strangled by a monstrous health insurance industry with a vested interest in charging the earth for a single sticking-plaster. When serious illness strikes, the American dream turns to a nightmare of staggering bills. 

Lionel Shriver, always fascinated by the intractable and unmentionable, takes the problem of US healthcare and shows how it shreds the lives of nice, ordinary people. In So Much for That, Shep Knacker has endured a dull working life building up his handyman business on the understanding that