Ep08 : American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach

What this episode covers

As you may know, Kevin recently completed a book, “American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach,” which is a quick but broad-spectrum read about healthcare, insurance, micro-economics, business, and the political process. His analysis is leavened with personal anecdotes, analogies and thought experiments which he uses to illustrate his major points. If you weren’t already aware, Kevin’s and my worldviews are built on different but overlapping core premises and “American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach,” is, as the title suggests, not radical on the grand political spectrum. The problems he identifies are universally acknowledged and the several remediations he recommends are practical, available, and will strike most readers as uncontroversially helpful approaches. But given the tightly constrained nature of the healthcare debate, where the most progressive administration we’re ever likely to see put forward a plan whose centerpiece is a 20 year old idea from the most conservative establishment think tank in existence, Kevin’s proposals are far beyond the most radical ideas on the table. We will probably have several future episodes focused more or less on “American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach.” Today’s podcast is pulled from casual conversations that we had while recording shows on other topics. Upon further review, I thought there was enough good material to put together an introduction to the book before a more thorough discussion. Material from Podcast Kevin's book on Amazon.com Music Time to Get Ill by Beastie Boys Transcript of Podcast Jad: Hello and welcome back to our podcast. This installment is a little different and a little shorter. As you may know, Kevin recently completed a book, American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach, which is a quick but broad spectrum read about healthcare, insurance, microeconomics, business, and the political process. His analysis has leavened with personal anecdotes, analogies, and thought experiments which he uses to illustrate his major points. If you weren't already aware, Kevin's and my world view are built on different but overlapping core premises, and American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach is - as the title suggests - not radical on the grand political spectrum. The problems he identifies are universally acknowledged, and the several remediations he recommends are practical, available, and will strike most readers as uncontroversially hopeful approaches. But given the tightly constrained nature of the healthcare debate, where the most progressive administration we're ever likely to see has put forth a plan who's centerpiece is a 20 year old idea from the most conservative establishment think tank and existence, Kevin's proposals are far beyond the most radical ideas on the table. We will probably have several future episodes focused more or less on American Healthcare: A Moderate Approach. Today's podcast is pulled from casual conversations that we had while recording shows on other topics. Upon further review, I thought there was enough good material to put together an introduction to the book before a more thorough discussion began. Because of the unintentional nature of this content, I had to do a fair amount of creative editing to clear out some names - mostly the name of a reviewer - and edit around non-relevant tangents. Please forgive any audio oddities that come your way. To start us off, Kevin gave me a rundown on the origins of the book and how it came to be. Kevin: When I first starting writing the healthcare book, what it actually started was a larger book and the healthcare was just supposed to be a chapter of it. That was actually what I was working on and then I just got really interested I guess in the healthcare side of it, and so I kind of separated it and then expanded it quite a bit more than it originally was because I wanted to be able to finish some of it.

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