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The Healthcare Policy Podcast ® Produced by David Introcaso — Government
The Healthcare Policy Podcast ® Produced by David Introcaso

Podcast interviews with health policy experts on timely subjects.

The Healthcare Policy Podcast website features audio interviews with healthcare policy experts on timely topics.

An online public forum routinely presenting expert healthcare policy analysis and comment is lacking. While other healthcare policy website programming exists, these typically present vested interest viewpoints or do not combine informed policy analysis with political insight or acumen. Since healthcare policy issues are typically complex, clear, reasoned, dispassionate discussion is required. These podcasts will attempt to fill this void.

Among other topics this podcast will address:
Implementation of the Affordable Care Act
Other federal Medicare and state Medicaid health care issues
Federal health care regulatory oversight, moreover CMS and the FDA
Healthcare research
Private sector healthcare delivery reforms including access, reimbursement and quality issues
Public health issues including the social determinants of health

Listeners are welcomed to share their program comments and suggest programming ideas.

Comments made by the interviewees are strictly their own and do not represent those of their affiliated organization/s.

www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Copyright: © David Introcaso, Ph.D.

Latest Episodes:

Professor Susan Neiman Discusses Her Just Published Book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era Sep 29, 2026

Show notes

In a world of unbridled self-interest or where self-interest becomes the basis for reason, where integrity is abandoned, where there exists a striking absence of and/or contempt for moral analysis, virtue and empathy and where cynicism becomes inevitable, power compromises the law and evil no longer needs to be justified.

These realities, for example, help explain a projected 14+ million deaths by 2030 via US AID funding cuts, the US quitting the WHO and the Paris accord, cutting Medicaid funding by ~$1 trillion, reducing projected ACA enrollment by nearly 50%, disappearing AHRQ, crippling the CDC and dismantling the EPA.

As Prof Neiman argues, “In all the words written in an attempt to understand the present crisis, what’s striking is the scarcity of moral analysis.” “Trump and his ilk could never have come to power without one belief: Moral concepts are for suckers who don’t know they’re being conned.”

Professor Susan Neiman bios are at: https://www.susan-neiman.com/ and at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Neiman.

Info on “Call It Evil” is at: https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324131045.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Dr. Phillip Alvelda and Professor Thomas Ferguson Discuss Their Response to the Senate Finance Committee Democrats’ Recent RFI to Reform US Healthcare Sep 12, 2026

Show notes

On July 30 Senate Finance Committee Democrats issued an 86-page Request for Information (RFI) titled, “Health Coverage That Works for Everyone.” As Ranking Democratic Member Ron Wyden explained, much like the Finance Committee’s 2008 white papers that laid the groundwork for the ACA, this RFI constitutes an essential blueprint for necessary and immediate federal healthcare reform.

Surprisingly - or not, beyond a limited number of trade publications and policy shops the RFI has to date been ignored.

The authors 167-page paper make essentially two arguments: while the Ds diagnosis is correct in that part of the problem is how commercial insurers (termed “Big Insurance”) make money (and how much), nearly half of the RFI’s 71 propose reforms will likely cause payers to move money to unregulated subsidiaries or affiliates instead of saving it or applying the savings to actual care spending; and, by ignoring hospital prices, that substantially are responsible for both health care spending and inflation (once again think: “It’s the Prices, Stupid”), the Senate Finance Ds are ignoring over $300 billion in potential annual savings. E.g., they write, “squeeze insurer margin perfectly and the hospital price base is exactly where it was,” and “you cannot audit the pricing power of the party [hospitals] you have just cast as the injured one.”

The report deserves the attention of all serious healthcare policy students.

The authors’ work, published as INET working paper, is at: Alvelda-Ferguson-Wyden-RFI-Critique-Brainworks-INET-final.pdf.

INET is at: https://www.ineteconomics.org/.

Professor Ferguson’s bio is at: https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/tferguson.

Dr. Alvelda’s bio is at: https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/experts/pAlvelda and at: https://brainworks.ai/about-us/.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

John McDonough Discusses His Just-Published Book, “America’s Wrong Turn, US Health Care in the Neoliberal Era” (350th Interview) Aug 19, 2026

Show notes

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/.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Ken Terry Discusses His Just-Published Book, "Beyond Medicare for All: Cracking the Code of Healthcare Affordability" Aug 12, 2026

Show notes

With the Congress adjourned for summer recess and the mid-terms now 83 days away, August is a good time to discuss substantive or systematic HC reform. Listeners, and/or anyone paying attention to mid-term campaigns and primaries (think: Dr. Abdul El-Sayed) are well aware healthcare is again on life-support largely due to increasing unaffordability and political acquiescence.

In “Beyond Medicare for All,” Mr. Terry essentially argues healthcare can be achieved without dismantling private insurance or expanding single-payer government health delivery by creating a bifurcated or two-tiered delivery and financing model that would be led in part by independent primary care physicians.

Information about Ken Terry’s is at: https://kevinmd.com/post-author/ken-terry

Information about “Beyond Medicare for All” is at: https://physicianledreform.com/

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Turquoise Health's Chief of Staff Ms. Carol Skenes Discusses Hospital Price Transparency Aug 02, 2026

Show notes

As everyone is well aware, healthcare, particularly acute care (think: hospitals) has become increasingly more unaffordable. For the four-year period ending next year ERISA or employer-sponsored health insurance plans will increase employee premiums by ~25%; this year the average employee family premium is ~$27,000; by the end of this year six million are expected to lose ACA coverage; and, to really on one’s surprise a recent survey found less half of Americans, regardless of income, believe they have the ability to pay for needed medical visits.

The answer seems to be legislating hospital price transparency. Earlier this month both the House Energy and Commerce and the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) committees passed price T bills out of committee. Regarding the Senate effort, HELP Committee Chair, Dr. Bill Cassidy, stated, “I'm very optimistic that it will pass . . . and I'm confident that it will."

Information on Turquoise Health is at: https://turquoise.health/patients.

Testimony presented during the June 10 House E&C hearing noted during this interview is at: https://democrats-energycommerce.house.gov/committee-activity/hearings/hearing-lowering-health-care-costs-all-americans-examining-policies.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Ms. Elena Mihaly Discusses Vermont's Climate Superfund Legislation Jul 14, 2026

Show notes

In May 2024, Vermont enacted entirely unprecedented legislation that attempts to mitigate climate-charged disaster events and associated financial fallout inflicted on Vermont residents.

Vermont climate superfund legislation, followed seven months later by New York (and presently pursued by at least ten other states), is in response to climate-charged disaster events that over the ten- yr period ending in ’25 cost Vermonters upwards of ~$2 billion. The legislation, premised on a deeply entrenched polluter pay principle, e.g., modeled after the federal toxic waste Superfund program, requires so called carbon majors, here oil and gas companies, to meet their unpaid, externalized costs by making compensatory payments. New York law is targeting a $75 billion fund. These dedicated funds will generally finance climate adaptation and infrastructure resiliency. Not surprisingly, these laws face of aggressive legal challenges by among others the American Petroleum Institute, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, West Virginia-led state attorneys general and the Trump administration that has filed federal lawsuits against both VT and NY. Among numerous related interviews, listeners will recall I discussed advances in attribution science with Stanford’s Chris Callahan in May 2025.

Information re: Vermont’s Climate Superfund Act is at: https://climatechange.vermont.gov/climate-superfund.

Information re: Vermont’s Conservation Law Foundation is at: https://www.clf.org/serving-new-england/vermont/.

(Apologies to Ms. Mihaly, at one point I call her Emily!?!)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

HHS's Failure to Decarbonize the US Healthcare Industry (Part 2) Jul 11, 2026

Show notes

During this podcast I read part two of a draft, yet-to-be-published essay titled, “Institutional Betrayal: HHS and the National Academy of Medicine’s Failure to Decarbonize the US healthcare Industry.” That the window formally closed in January 2025 means healthcare will not approach reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in 2030. HHS will continue to intentionally fund the industry’s harm-treat-harm business model meaning healthcare is by design traumatic. Iatrogenesis is built-in. Americans will become increasingly consumed by, not consumers of, healthcare.

Comments are of course welcomed.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

HHS's Failure to Decarbonize the US Healthcare Industry (350th Podcast) Jun 29, 2026

Show notes

During this podcast I read part one of a draft, yet-to-be-published essay titled, “Institutional Betrayal: HHS and the National Academy of Medicine’s Failure to Decarbonize the US healthcare Industry.” That the window formally closed in January 2025 means healthcare will not approach reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in 2030. HHS will continue to intentionally fund the industry’s harm-treat-harm business model meaning healthcare is by design traumatic. Iatrogenesis is built-in. Americans will become increasingly consumed by, not consumers of, healthcare.

Comments are of course welcomed.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

HHS's Failure to Decarbonize the Healthcare Industry (350th Podcast) Jun 29, 2026

Show notes

This is the first of a two-part reading of a yet-to-be-published essay presently titled, “Institutional Failure: HHS and the National Academy of Medicine’s Failure to Decarbonize Healthcare.”

Comments are of course welcomed.

Thank you.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

Ms. Jessica Forden Discusses Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci's Recently-Published Book, "Work, Retire, Repeat, The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy" Jun 06, 2026

Show notes

Unlike most rich countries or advanced economies the US does not define healthcare, including long term care, as a universal social risk – despite the fact we all get sick, no one knows their health status tomorrow, approximately 85% of Medicare beneficiaries have at least one chronic condition and life expectancy at birth is approximately 79 years. Medicare does not provide long term care, Social Security replaces just 43% of the average workers’ wages and only approximately 40% of retirees receive income from some form of employer or personal retirement plan.

With me to discuss Prof. Ghilarducci’s book is her colleague Ms. Jessica Forden an economics Ph.D. candidate at the New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis.

Information on Prof. Teresa Ghilarducci’s book is at: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/W/bo212888995.html.

The New School’s Schwartz Center for Economic Policy (SCEPA) research publications are at: https://www.economicpolicyresearch.org/research.

Jessica Forden’s LinkedIn page is at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-forden-88b265131/.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thehealthcarepolicypodcast.com

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