Priceless: Curing the Heathcare Crisis

Book Detail

Hardcover: 392 pages Publisher: Independent Institute
Available formats:
Hardcover, Kindle Buy from amazon.com

From the Publisher

In the groundbreaking book Priceless, John C. Goodman reveals how healthcare is a “complex system” that cannot be managed from the top down. True reform requires liberating doctors and patients by allowing them to interact in innovative ways to help meet unique individual medical needs.

The most important problems that plague American healthcare arise because we are trapped. Virtually all of us—patients, doctors, caregivers, employers, employees, etc.—are locked into a system fraught with perverse incentives that raise the cost of healthcare, reduce its quality, and make care less accessible than it should be.

Unfortunately, conventional thinking about how to fix those problems is marred by two false beliefs. The first is the idea that to make healthcare accessible it must be free at the point of delivery. The second is the idea that to make health insurance fair, premiums should not reflect real risks. Both ideas are the reason no one ever faces a real price for anything in the medical marketplace.

Goodman demonstrates how these and other false beliefs have eliminated normal market forces from American healthcare, making it almost impossible to solve problems the way they are solved in other markets. Relying on a common-sense understanding of how markets work, Goodman offers an unconventional diagnosis that allows him to think outside the box and propose dozens of bold reforms that would liberate patients and caregivers from the trap of a third-party payment system that stands in the way of affordable, high-quality healthcare. 

About the Author

John C. Goodman is a Research Fellow at the Independent Institute and President and Kellye Wright Fellow in Health Care at the National Center for Policy Analysis. The Wall Street Journal and the National Journal, among other media, have called him the “Father of Health Savings Accounts.”

John Goodman’s Health Policy Blog is the premier health care blog on the Internet where pro-market, pro-private sector solutions to health care problems are routinely examined and debated by top health policy experts throughout the country. He is frequently invited to testify before Congress on health care reform, and he is the author of more than fifty studies on health policy, retirement reform and tax issues plus nine books, including Lives at Risk: Single Payer National Health Insurance Around the World (with Gerald Musgrave and Devon Herrick); Leaving Women Behind: Modern Families, Outdated Laws (with Kimberley A. Strassel and Celeste Colgan); and the trailblazing Patient Power: Solving America's Health Care Crisis, that sold more than 300,000 copies. His other books include The Handbook on State Health Care Reform, National Health Care in Great Britain: Lessons for the U.S.A., Economics of Public Policy: The Micro View (with Edwin Dolan), Fighting the War of Ideas in Latin America, and Privatization.

He received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, and he has taught and completed research at Columbia University, Stanford University, Dartmouth College, Southern Methodist University and the University of Dallas.

Goodman regularly appears on television and radio news programs on Fox News Channel, CNN, PBS, Fox Business Network and CNBC, and his articles appear in The Wall Street Journal, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review, Health Affairs, Kaiser Health News and other national publications. Goodman was also the pivotal lead expert in the grassroots public policy campaign, “Free Our Health Care Now,” an unsurpassed national education effort to communicate patient-centered alternatives to a government-run health care system. The initiative resulted in the largest online petition ever delivered on Capitol Hill.

Priceless: Curing the Heathcare Crisis

By: John C. Goodman

Patients, providers, employers, and employees are all trapped in a dysfunctional healthcare system fraught with perverse incentives that raise costs, reduce quality, and make care less accessible. Now Priceless cuts through the politics and proposes dozens of bold reforms for the new Healthcare Contract with America to free patients and caregivers to be empowered to chart their own lives with low-cost, high-quality healthcare.

“I have been following John Goodman’s health policy ideas for as long as I’ve been on Capitol Hill. . . . Priceless makes it abundantly clear why he is a source of wisdom, insight, and innovative thinking.”
—Paul Ryan, Chairman, House Budget Committee

“John Goodman has long been the clearest and most insightful healthcare thinker . . . . it's time we acted on his common sense, fact-based wisdom inPriceless.” —Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana

Priceless: Curing the Heathcare Crisis

Available formats:
Hardcover, Kindle Buy from amazon.com