Recovery: A Guide to Reforming the U.S. Health Sector

by Michael F. Cannon

A quick‐​reference guide to reforms that state and federal policymakers must enact to make health care better, more affordable, more secure, and more universal. Health care in the United States is not a free market. In many ways, U.S. residents are less free to make their own health decisions than residents of other nations. Government controls a larger share of health spending in the United States than in Canada, the United Kingdom, and most other advanced nations. State and federal governments subsidize low‐​quality medical care and penalize high‐​quality care. They block innovations that would otherwise reduce medical prices. Congress even funds veterans benefits in a way that increases the likelihood of war. Fortunately, there are corners of the U.S. health sector where market forces have had room to breathe. In those areas, markets have made health care better, more affordable, and more secure. They have made health care more universal-both in the United States and in nations that supposedly already had universal health care. Sometimes, market forces develop such innovations despite government policies that exist explicitly to block them. Those sorts of innovations should be exploding across the United States and the world, bringing affordable health care to low‐​income patients and driving high‐​cost and low‐​quality providers and insurers out of business. But they aren't. Recovery shows that making health care as universal as possible requires ending all barriers that government places in the way of better, more affordable, and more secure health care.

112 pages, Paperback

Published October 16, 2023

Reviews

[Milan Linhart]

it’s Greek to me as i’m not familiar with the US system, in addition i live in a country that leaves me with just 10 % of total health spending to my choice (the least of OECD members)

generally it seems people think if there is a number indicating the price it is a product of capitalism, then of course high prices are its fault without further knowledge of government interventions behind and oh boy there are soo many

what if people knew how much “free” government services cost per unit : project idea

[Jessie Tong]

very succinct and interesting