The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande wrote one of the most influential stories about health care in 2009. The piece, published in June, was about geographic disparities in health spending, specifically why McAllen, Texas is one of the most expensive places in the country to get medical care. The article raised so many vital questions about the dysfunction of the U.S. health care system that Barack Obama was said to be carrying the article around the White House, urging staffers and lawmakers to read it. The President even mentioned the story in a speech to the American Medical Association.

Gawande, in addition to being a New Yorker writer, Harvard-educated surgeon and former adviser to Bill Clinton, is also the author of the books Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes On An Imperfect Science and Better: A Surgeon’s Notes On Performance. Well, Gawande has a new book out called The Checklist Manifesto, which was the reason he appeared on the Daily Show last night. (Clip after the jump.)