Free Health Care

Recently, U.S. Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed had a 90-minute discussion on Ezra Klein's podcast, with much of the runtime centered around his vision for implementing Medicare for All. One such vision is to lower the age of Medicare eligibility from 65 to 50 and start covering children. Another is to expand the range of services—including vision, dental and hearing—offered to all beneficiaries, regardless of their plan. At no point in the discussion did El-Sayed even attempt to estimate what adding more, more, and more to Medicare will do to a system already responsible for $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

That strategic ambiguity is nothing new for advocates of single-payer. But policies deserve to be scrutinized, especially when they come with price tags in the tens of trillions. In this episode, we've got questions for El-Sayed that Ezra Klein was, evidently, too afraid to ask.

After a wave of surprising electoral victories, the Democratic Socialists of America have become impossible to ignore. With the November midterms fast approaching, it's worth asking what their growing influence could mean for American health care. Publicly, candidates like Abdul El Sayed tout single-payer, government-funded "cradle to grave" care. But their stump speeches often neglect to explore the finer details of how such a system would work, what it's going to cost, and whether or not it would be any good.

And, importantly, do Medicare for All evangelists even practice what they preach?

In this episode, we put the DSA's health care vision under the microscope in search of answers.

The freedom to make decisions about your own health care varies dramatically depending on where you live. Thanks to a new Health Freedom Index developed by the Center for Modern Health and the Knee Regulatory Research Center at West Virginia University, we now have a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of how each state ranks in 54 policy variables across five categories assessing professional, institutional, patient, payment, and delivery freedom.

In this episode, we examine the report's key findings and discuss ways in which the legal and regulatory environments in certain states affect how health care can be rendered and, naturally, how that affects patients. In addition to spotlighting the top five and bottom five performers, we also highlight the states which have improved and worsened by the widest margins in the last half-decade.

California can't afford Medi-Cal. Between expanding the program to cover illegal immigrants, the rampant fraud, and multibillion-dollar overruns, Medi-Cal is in a full-blown financial and administrative crisis. Yet instead of confronting its spending problem, legislators in Sacramento are looking for more ways to collect money. A union-backed "Billionaire Tax" claims it will raise some one-time funds for health care, but new allegations suggest its real purpose may be using the ballot initiative process as leverage for union interests.

In this episode, we examine a darker lesson of the Medi-Cal crisis: how government's incentives can encourage powerful players in health care to manipulate the political process, leverage the power of the state to influence sweeter negotiations, and leave taxpayers and patients footing the bill.

For more on this topic, please visit the Benjamin Rush Institute Substack.

Every new health care problem seems to inspire the same solution: more government. But why hasn't expanding the scope of the federal government solved the problems plaguing American health care?

In this episode, host Brian Mew and special guest Dr. Sonny Morton tackle that question head-on to unpack why markets are better positioned to solve problems that central planners cannot. Along the way, they discuss the importance of price signals; the nature of incentives; the dangers of bureaucratic encroachment; the key to increasing production; and, importantly, why these economic principles matter in health care.

After listening, we would encourage you to please check out Dr. Morton's Fuel for the Free Mind for more on the philosophy of liberty and freedom as a lens for solving everyday problems.

"This is the predictable output of a system that was never designed to close its own loops." That's what Dr. Ronya Green had to say about the current state of health care, where the government subsidizes insurance companies' domination of the market and many general practitioners are stuck doing two hours of EHR and desk work for every one that they are able to spend with patients. However, there are indeed other ways to practice. In this episode, we're coming to you directly from New Orleans to deliver key takeaways from this year's DPC Summit and show tomorrow's physicians what's possible when doctors are free to put their patients first.

Two hundred fifty years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the U.S.A. remains the greatest experiment in liberty the world has ever known. But are we as free today as the Founders envisioned? And what will it take to ensure our best days are still ahead? In this Independence Day episode, host Brian Mew reflects on both the legacy of Dr. Benjamin Rush and the radically libertarian principles that made America a shining city on a hill. As health care drifts further toward centralized planning, administrative bloat, and top-down control, can the nation that pioneered the cause of personal freedom and restrained government chart a different course?

Why are an increasing number of physicians choosing to step outside the insurance-driven system in favor of direct care? In this episode, we explore how American health care has changed since WWII and the litany of policy decisions that, directly or indirectly, further separated consumers from the actual cost of their health care. Between growing dissatisfaction with insurers and the broken promises of the Affordable Care Act, more and more Americans are seeking a market reform that will restore the doctor-patient relationship—and they're finding it through DPC.

What does it mean to "free" health care? In the first episode of the Benjamin Rush Institute's Free Health Care Podcast, Director Brian Mew and Board Member Dr. John Flo discuss the growing challenges facing American medicine—from physician burnout and shortages to rising costs and declining transparency—and explore the innovative models offering a different path forward: a path to putting patients and doctors, not middlemen and bureaucrats, back in control.