Health care policy is difficult, featuring intractable trade-offs that make it nearly impossible to satisfy everyone. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that one of our two political parties has increasingly flirted with the utopian proposal of Medicare for All, with little understanding of how to enact it or what the unintended consequences might be. And the other party seems determined to avoid the topic of health care reform, at least publicly. But the state of our health care system matters — it’s an increasingly large part of our economy, and it is the source of crucial innovations. So I’m delighted to discuss it with Amitabh Chandra.

Amitabh is the John H. Makin Visiting Scholar at AEI, where his work focuses on the economics of health care policy. In addition, he is a professor at both Harvard Business School and the director of health policy research at the Harvard Kennedy School, a member of the Congressional Budget Office’s Panel of Health Advisers, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.