About

Peter Budetti trained as a physician (Columbia) and lawyer (Berkeley) but has spent most of his professional life as a health policy scholar and Washington insider. He served as senior staff for Congressman Henry Waxman and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, was part of the small group that drafted President Clinton's health reform proposal, and oversaw modernization of the government's outdated systems for detecting and preventing healthcare fraud under President Obama, acquiring the amusing moniker of Healthcare Antifraud Czar. He decided to write novels for the general public in large part because he felt he had stories worth telling but had no desire to add to the numerous articles he had published in medical and public health journals that languished in obscurity. His novels are inspired by real events and personal experiences. The first, Hemorrhage, is about members of the Russian mob who infiltrate the US government and bankroll corrupt corporate leaders; the idea was triggered by a Russian gang he learned about that ran a string of phony medical clinics. Given the current Administration's links to Russia, he stuck with that theme in the second novel, Deadly Bargain. The third novel, Resuscitated, draws on his earlier life as a real doctor taking care of patients as a pediatrician, as well as his legal background; it portrays the true-to-life ramifications for real people of the complex, exorbitantly expensive, and inequitable medical care delivery system in this country, and the nobody-wins world of medical malpractice. He practices law part-time with Phillips and Cohen, LLP, the nation's most successful law firm representing whistleblowers; the firm's lawsuits have returned billions of dollars to the government that was stolen by fraud. He is married, with two grown children, seven grandchildren, and a Pekingese-mix doggy. When he and his wife decided to leave Washington, DC far behind, they began a new and delightful life in Kansas City, Missouri, and also spend as much time as possible at their lakehouse in Arkansas.