Today, I’m joined by Anup Malani. He’s a professor of law at the University of Chicago, currently on leave, serving as the first Chief Economist at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This means he oversees economic analysis for the agency managing $2 trillion in annual healthcare spending — 23% of the entire federal budget. CMS runs Medicare for 70 million elderly Americans, Medicaid for low-income families, and the health insurance exchanges where millions buy coverage.

Malani answers a lot of questions I have about American healthcare policy:

* The US spends 20% of GDP on healthcare. Why is our life expectancy so bad?

* How do you crack down on Medicare fraud without hurting patients who need care?

* What incentives do private insurers like UnitedHealth have to make patients look sicker than they are?

* What do academic economists get wrong about policy?

The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub.

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