Do you want to know what to read to become a true health policy wonk? Find out in my “Five Books” interview, now posted at The Browser.
I would defy anybody to come up with [the US health system]. If you could go to a world where you are unaware of the American system and then design a system, there is no way you would come up with anything like what we have here. It’s just preposterous. It doesn’t make sense on so many levels. The risk pools are chopped up, there are many inefficiencies and strange subsidisations. Nobody would do it that way. One couldn’t even imagine that it would be possible. You can’t make this stuff up.
I actually mention six books:
- Inside National Health Reform, by John McDonough (more here)
- The Social Transformation of American Medicine, by Paul Starr (more here)
- Remedy and Reaction, by Paul Starr (more here)
- Bring Market Prices to Medicare, by Robert Coulam, Roger Feldman, and Bryan Dowd (more here)
- Your Money or Your Life, by David Cutler (more here)
- The Political Life of Medicare, by Jon Oberlander
There’s one more I’ll blog about later in the week. It differs from the other six in that it is fiction, but policy relevant fiction: 2030, by Albert Brooks.
