Most of us assume the rules governing American healthcare were written for our safety — and that the system, whatever its flaws, basically works. In this episode, host Aaron Ross Powell talks with Lauren K. Hall, professor of political science and associate dean of academic affairs at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and Alicia Plemmons, director of the Knee Regulatory Research Center at West Virginia University, about what that heavily regulated system quietly costs us. They discuss how stacked regulations centralize care in hospitals and crowd out alternatives, why many licensing rules grew from professional protectionism rather than patient safety, the shift from telling providers what they're permitted to do toward letting them do everything they're trained for, and where reform is already taking hold — from interstate licensing compacts to direct primary care.

Further Reading

• The Medicalization of Birth and Death — Lauren K. Hall, Johns Hopkins University Press

• Knee Regulatory Research Center — Alicia Plemmons, West Virginia University

• The Social Transformation of American Medicine — Paul Starr, Basic Books

• Interstate Medical Licensure Compact

More from Liberalism.org

• Why Liberalism Needs the Family — Lauren K. Hall