Review
“I have been following John Goodman’s health policy ideas for as long as I’ve been on Capitol Hill. John’s latest effort, Priceless: Curing the Health Care Crisis, makes it abundantly clear why he is a source of wisdom, insight, and innovative thinking.”
—Paul Ryan, Chairman, U.S. House Budget Committee
“John Goodman’s book Priceless provides more good thinking from the person who taught us that incentives matter.”
—Michael O. Leavitt, former Governor of Utah; former Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; former Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
“With his head for the practical and his heart for the disadvantaged, John Goodman has long been the clearest and most insightful healthcare thinker we have. Now that our perverse, accidental ‘insurance’ system has reached its inevitable crisis, it’s time we acted on his common sense, fact-based wisdom in Priceless.”
—Mitch Daniels, President, Purdue University; former Governor of Indiana
“Priceless is an important contribution to a market-friendly approach to reforming health care.”
—Martin S. Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University; President Emeritus, National Bureau of Economic Research
“If liberal commentators wish to sharpen their claws, there is no better stone on which to do it than John Goodman’s book Priceless.”
—Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University; former Commissioner, Physician Payment Review Commission
“While many people discuss the problems within our healthcare system, few propose real solutions. John Goodman has written a book that not only accurately describes what is happening with healthcare in our nation, it provides key solutions and answers to a problem that so desperately needs to be corrected.”
—Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida
“After a year of congressional debate, 2,000 and some-odd pages of legislation, and a Supreme Court verdict, few issues remain more contentious than President Obama’s 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, dubbed ‘Obamacare.’ . . . Priceless is required reading on the subject. . . . The central theme of Priceless is that patients, doctors, insurers, and employers should be freed of government encumbrances to interact in the marketplace. Patients should be able to check physician fees to choose combinations of quality, cost and amenities. Doctors should be rewarded for finding innovative ways to lower costs. Insurers should be able to charge premiums that reflect risk, to enable them to service high-risk customers. Employers should be allowed to negotiate portable insurance policies for their employees, one way to help patients with pre-existing conditions. . . . For better solutions to this and other problems of providing affordable health care, Ryan, Obama, Romney, and Biden should all read this book.”
—Barron’s
“John Goodman, widely known as the father of health savings accounts, is as provocative and controversial as ever in his timely and important, new book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. His prescription for fixing what ails American health care is to free American consumers to seek the health care that best suits their needs and to free physicians and hospital administrators to provide the best, lowest cost care they can by getting rid of the constraints and disincentives provided by insurance companies and public payers. Essential reading for all who have been frustrated in their search for a workable solution to our health care woes.”
—Gail R. Wilensky, Senior Fellow, Project HOPE; former Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
“Instead of keeping the market from dealing with preexisting conditions, health care economist John C. Goodman argues, we should encourage it. In a new book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, Goodman offers an abundance of ways in which an unfettered market could address the problems of people with chronic medical needs. One proposal: Employers could buy health insurance that was fully portable—employees would own their policies and could take them from job to job. Another idea: Health Savings Accounts for the chronically ill that would allow disabled patients to manage their own budgets and choose the goods and services that best meet their needs. Still another: ‘health status insurance,’ which would allow individuals to protect themselves against the risk that a preexisting condition could emerge down the road and cause their insurance premiums to rise. What America’s health care landscape needs is more freedom and competition, not less.”
—Boston Globe
“John Goodman has been developing innovative ideas on how to create a better health system, a less expensive health system, a health system with more access for well over two decades. He really was the creator of the health-savings-account model and developed that entire initiative to try to give people increased resources and increased control over their health.”
—Newt Gingrich, 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
“There’s no question that today’s health care system is littered with distorted incentives and what John Goodman calls dysfunctionality. This book is a call to arms to do something about it. Even if you don’t agree with all of Goodman’s ideas—and there are plenty I disagree with—you should read this book if you want to be an informed participant in the debate over the future of health care in this country.”
—Peter R. Orszag, former Director, Congressional Budget Office; Vice Chairman, Global Banking, Citigroup, Inc.
“Some might object that all omelets, good or bad, require the breaking of eggs. Granting that the Affordable Care Act involves some dismal economics, what is the alternative to providing affordable care? For alternatives that would move in the direction of free markets, try the recently published Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, by John C. Goodman. Just for starters, Goodman would ‘liberate the supply side of the market’ by legally permitting nurses and other lower-level personnel to perform a range of services that now require the participation of much scarcer physicians. By increasing the opportunities for these people, we might induce far more supply. That’s another law of economics.”
—Barron’s
“Priceless makes a very persuasive case that liberating people is the key to health reform. When we free the patients and the healthcare professionals from payer and government shackles, we will drive quality up and price down and eliminate an enormous amount of waste.”
—Stephen B. Bonner, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cancer Treatment Centers of America
“John Goodman is always interesting, always provocative. His ideas are not to be ignored.”
—Jim Cooper, U.S. Congressman (D-TN)
“Priceless illustrates the importance of market-based solutions to drive affordability, access, and higher quality experience for today’s empowered healthcare consumers.”
—Angela F. Braly, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, WellPoint, Inc.
“Priceless is unique in that it combines a general discussion of the issues in health; access, cost and quality, with specific implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Act of 2009 on these same issues. The book is provocative and instructive, a combination that is difficult to pull off but done here in John Goodman’s style of combining humor with fact. This book should be on the reading list for everyone interested in healthcare reform.”
—Thomas R. Saving, Jeff Montgomery Professor of Economics and Director of Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A & M University
“Thirteen years ago I co-authored a book that I thought could cut the Gordian knot of the health care dilemma. The dozens of copies sold proved insufficient to promote the needed revolutionary change. John C. Goodman has now written the book that can do the job. He presents as clear an answer as we are ever likely to see, along with examples from the real world. It’s now our job to make the case in a politically effective way. New thinking is necessary, and Goodman provides it. He argues that a free-market approach is essential; health care must be bought with money that most consumers have reason to see as their own. And while most people would respond to such a proposal with an incredulous roll of the eyes, this perception must change. Goodman’s wonderful volume considers both the theoretical and the practical Economic principles, clearly stated, form the basis for discussion. Policy recommendations include strategic thinking and tactical objectives. Goodman tells us how it all can work, and what political decisions will be required. . . . A cornerstone of his analysis is that incentives are more efficient than rules for channeling behavior toward optional solutions. Yet, curiously, this perspective is controversial: Many prefer the authoritarian approach, assuming that incentives will not protect us from individual folly, and will lead us where they intend us to go. . . . Goodman argues persuasively that a private-sector approach is the only solution for the long term. . . . Goodman is a master of clarity. . . . The vigorous pursuit of individual liberty produces a self-correcting system in which increasing equality can occur: John C. Goodman has charted the path.”
—The Weekly Standard
“With Priceless, John Goodman has written a path-breaking book that everyone should read.”
—William A. Archer, Jr. , former U.S. Congressman and Chairman, House Ways and Means Committee
“In a health policy world dominated by old tarnished ideas recycled under new acronyms, it is a pleasure to read Priceless that goes back to first principles, defies pigeonholing, and ends up with imaginative yet eminently practical proposals for reform.”
—Mark V. Pauly, Bendheim Professor; Professor of Health Care Management, and Professor of Business and Public Policy Wharton School; University of Pennsylvania; former Commissioner, Physician Payment Review Commission
“John Goodman is one of the nation’s top thinkers in healthcare policy. His new book, Priceless, will be an important resource for policy makers in Washington and around the country.”
—Kay Bailey Hutchison, U.S. Senator (R-TX)
“John Goodman is a highly influential health policy analyst, organization leader, and entrepreneur whose ideas are always provocative and simply can’t be ignored. You may not agree with every proposal he makes, but he is right on target when he notes that future solutions to unsustainable health-cost growth must convince consumers and patients that they gain from those reforms.”
—C. Eugene Steuerle, Institute Fellow and Richard B. Fisher Chair, Urban Institute
“In Priceless, Goodman argues that doctors are trapped in a dysfunctional system and they need to be liberated. He’s right. Restore liberty. End coercion.”
—Donald J. Palmisano, former President, American Medical Association
“In Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, John Goodman explains why so many Americans—the sick, the healthy, consumers, employers, medical professionals and insurers—feel trapped by the U.S. health care system. Thankfully, he demonstrates that there are ways to escape the health-care traps, and his solutions deserve serious attention, regardless of one’s political persuasions.”
—John Engler, President, Business Roundtable; former Governor of Michigan
“In the sea of perplexity and inefficiency that characterizes health policy, John Goodman’s new book, Priceless, provides fresh and original insights to help steer us into a system that harnesses individual choice, aligns price and quality, and more effectively utilizes financing to achieve these ends.”
—June E. O’Neill, Wollman Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of Business and Government, Baruch College; former Director, Congressional Budget Office
“John Goodman’s terrific book Priceless is indeed priceless. It offers a breath of fresh air in a tired healthcare debate that demonstrates once again that markets enjoy their greatest advantage in complex settings that call for imaginative solutions that no government-driven system can deliver. Critics may carp that healthcare markets are never perfectly competitive. Goodman offers chapter and verse to explain why market innovation beats top-down schemes by a mile—ACA especially included.”
—Richard A. Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University
“In Priceless, John Goodman provides a much needed perspective on healthcare issues—he is the leading proponent of using market-based reforms to solve health policy problems.”
—Kevin M. Murphy, George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, U. of Chicago
“John Goodman’s analysis is incisive and compelling. The insight and innovative thinking in Priceless will be invaluable in avoiding the harms of government-run healthcare.”
—Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media
“John Goodman’s timely and important book Priceless has much to like. The presentation of healthcare economics is clear as is the discussion of the perverse incentives in health care. Good writing and clear explanations have always been hallmarks of Goodman’s writing. I particularly like three aspects of this book: the consideration of the role of time prices and the surprising winners and losers that immerge from the healthcare reform legislation; the analysis of the political economy of healthcare systems and Goodman’s explanation of why European systems look and act so differently from ours; and the policy prescriptions to reform health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. Anyone seriously interested in understanding healthcare reform should look carefully at the proposals offered here.”
—Michael A. Morrisey, Professor of Health Economics and Health Insurance and Director of the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, University of Alabama at Birmingham
“I have not agreed with Goodman’s emphasis on high-deductible health insurance in health care... But no one who is serious about health reform can afford to ignore the ideas in Priceless.”
—Alain C. Enthoven, Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus, Stanford University
“In Priceless, John Goodman’s challenge to the conventional wisdom of a health care system broken because of excessive freedom can not be more timely. As we stand on the brink of hyper-regulating our system further, Goodman cogently argues that our answer is to free our system from the traps policymakers, insurers and providers have built over the decades.”
—Stephen T. Parente, Professor of Finance and Director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute, University of Minnesota
“John Goodman explains in Priceless why the health sector is so dysfunctional and why problems cannot be solved by adding even more layers of government bureaucracy, regulation, and price distortion. Goodman brings his clear thinking as an economist to explain how we could employ market forces in health care to realign incentives so patients, doctors, and all of the players in the health care marketplace are seeking greater efficiency, higher quality, and better value.”
—Grace-Marie Turner, President, Galen Institute
“From the author of Patient Power, Priceless is a new book about why we need to empower doctors as well as patients.”
—Daniel H. Johnson, Jr., M.D., former President, American Medical Association; former President, World Medical Association
About the Author
John C. Goodman is Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, President of the Goodman Institute for Public Policy Research, and author of more than 50 studies on health policy, retirement reform, and tax issues. Dr. Goodman is the author of ten books, including Living with Obamacare: A Consumer's Guide; 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 articles have been featured in publications such as Health Affairs, National Review, and the Wall Street Journal. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
