Read This First

• Healthy Competition: What's Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It by Michael F. Cannon and Michael D. Tanner (Cato Institute, 2005)
  America's healthcare system is at a crossroads, faced with rising costs, quality concerns, and a lack of patient control. Some blame market forces. Yet many troubles can be traced directly to pervasive government influence: entitlements, tax laws, and costly regulations. Consumer choice and competition deliver higher quality and lower prices in other areas of the economy. In this new book, Cannon and Tanner argue that removing restrictions can do the same for health care.

General Introductions to Health Care Policy

• Patient Power by John C. Goodman and Gerald L. Musgrave (Cato Institute, 1992)
  Demonstrates that unwise government policies cause most health care problems, and advocates a competitive marketplace in which patients—not bureaucrats and bean counters—control important health care decisions.
• Mortal Peril by Richard A. Epstein (Addison-Wesley, 1997)
  Argues that unregulated provision of health care will increase access to quality medical care, and advocates a free market in human organs.
• Health Care Choices by Clark C. Havighurst (The AEI Press, 1995)
  Calls for more creative use of better-defined private contracts to assure pluralism, decentralization, and consumer choice in health care.
• Holding Health Care Accountable by E. Haavi Morreim (Oxford University Press, 2001)
  Argues that patients need real options and reasonable information to decide how much of their resources they want to allot to health care.

On Reforming Health Insurance

• Crisis of Abundance: Rethinking How We Pay for Health Care by Arnold Kling (Cato Institute, 2006)
  Argues that the way we finance health care matches neither the needs of patients nor the way medicine is practiced.
• Health Benefits at Work by Mark V. Pauly (University of Michigan Press, 1997)
  Examines how employers manage the health insurance they provide to their workers and who really pays for employer-arranged health insurance.
• Pooling Health Insurance Risks by Mark Pauly and Bradley Herring (AEI Press, 1999)
  Argues that the alleged problems of risk segmentation in unregulated individual health insurance markets are much less serious than many critics think.
• Free for All? Lessons from the RAND Health Insurance Experiment by Joseph P. Newhouse (Harvard University Press, 1993)
  Reviews an important study about how individual behaviors change when health care services are offered for free. Provides the empirical foundation for medical savings accounts.
• Empowering Health Care Consumers Through Tax Reform edited by Grace-Marie Arnett (University of Michigan Press, 1999)
  Emphasizes that reforming the tax treatment of health insurance is essential to creating a more efficient and equitable market for health care and health insurance in the United States.

On Reforming Government Programs

• The Economics of Medicare Reform by Andrew J. Rettenmaier and Thomas R. Saving (The W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, 2000)
  Argues for moving Medicare to a pre-funded system of retirement health insurance. Thomas Saving is a Medicare Trustee.
• Medicare's Midlife Crisis by Sue A. Blevins (Cato Institute, 2001)
  Puts the health insurance program for the elderly and disabled in historical context, reveals the shenanigans involved in getting it enacted, and details the threats the program poses to individual liberty.
• To America's Health: A Proposal to Reform the Food and Drug Administration by Henry I. Miller (Hoover Institution Press, 2000)
  Explains why and how to reform the FDA, from the perspective of a former FDA official.