John McDonough Discusses His Just-Published Book, “America’s Wrong Turn, US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era” (350th Interview)

Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s (think, e.g., Hayek, Friedman, Reagan, Stockman and Clinton), US policymakers decided healthcare should be defined like any other commercial or market commodity. It’s not, think: Ken Arrow. Therefore, national policymakers under the mantra of the financialization of everything or privatization included healthcare (think: Medicare Advantage); largely per Robert Bork’s book, “The Anti-Trust Paradox” policymakers freed healthcare of anti trust enforcement and increasingly deregulated healthcare (think: the employer-sponsored insurance (EIS) system).

Today, US healthcare is arguably the largest industry in the world’s largest economy, with a ~$7.5 trillion market cap, and is highly concentrated. As Prof McDonough cites, “America’s health care crisis is,” per Phil Longman, “brought to you by monopoly.” Think: UNH that controls approximately 2,700 global subsidiaries and affiliates.

We know the results.

In his introduction Professor McDonough appropriately cites Maya Angelou’s observation, “if you don’t know where you’ve come from, you don’t know where you are going.” Possibly more optimistic, James Baldwin phrased the idea as, “If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go."

One can hope.

Information regarding “America’s Wrong Turn” is at: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/53872/americas-wrong-turn?srsltid=AfmBOoqNV4mGGs9z2P9ym233e-Bsp4EBV3SAAvJKYm2RTAKtcuAk1afm.

Prof McDonough’s Harvard Chan School of Public Health website page is at: https://hsph.harvard.edu/profile/john-e-mcdonough/.

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