The Healthcare Policy Podcast ® Produced by David Introcaso
von David Introcaso, Ph.D.
- alle zwei WochenErscheinungsrhythmus
- 40 mintypische Länge
- 24. Okt.letzte Folge
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.
Folgen
Dr. Stephen Bezruchka Discusses His Just-Published, “Born Sick in the USA, Improving the Health of a Nation”
Federal policymakers continue to turn a blind eye to the social determinants of health (SDOH), despite overwhelming evidence that non-medical factors substantially determine population health and longevity. Clinical care averts only roughly
Professor Susan Neiman Discusses Her Just Published Book, “Call It Evil: Understanding the Trump Era
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 beco
Dr. Phillip Alvelda and Professor Thomas Ferguson Discuss Their Response to the Senate Finance Committee Democrats’ Recent RFI to Reform US Healthcare
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
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, nation
Ken Terry Discusses His Just-Published Book, "Beyond Medicare for All: Cracking the Code of Healthcare Affordability"
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
Turquoise Health's Chief of Staff Ms. Carol Skenes Discusses Hospital Price Transparency
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
Ms. Elena Mihaly Discusses Vermont's Climate Superfund Legislation
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
HHS's Failure to Decarbonize the US Healthcare Industry (Part 2)
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 Jan
HHS's Failure to Decarbonize the US Healthcare Industry (350th Podcast)
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 Jan
HHS's Failure to Decarbonize the Healthcare Industry (350th Podcast)
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
Ms. Jessica Forden Discusses Dr. Teresa Ghilarducci's Recently-Published Book, "Work, Retire, Repeat, The Uncertainty of Retirement in the New Economy"
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 Med
Tufts Professor William Masters Discusses Food Affordability and Food Production Stability in the Age of Climate Denial
To state the obvious nutrition is considered the cornerstone of public health, a, if not the, primary preventative measure against chronic disease. Nevertheless, the OBBBA cut SNAP funding by an estimated $187 billion; since the start of th
Mr. Robert Andrews Discusses Self-Insured Employer Health Plan Efforts to Address Healthcare Affordability
Not surprisingly healthcare affordability has risen to the top or #1 mid-term election campaign issue. Largely due to pricing failure, that costs Americans about $250 billion annually, pricing power is the consequence of an increasingly con
Mike Meno Discusses the Recently-Introduced Senate "Stop Climate Shakedowns Act"
Per my May 2025 interview with Stanford’s Chris Callahan regarding his April 2025 “Nature” article titled, “Carbon Majors and the Scientific Case for Climate Liability,” we know that among the 90 companies responsible for 63% of industrial
Dr. Adam Cunningham Discusses Medical Tourism
Listeners are all well aware US healthcare is increasingly unaffordable. Among other stats nearly 50% of Americas are either uninsured, at 8% or 27 million, or underinsured, at 41% or 120 million. Upwards of 4.8 million Americans are expect
Georgetown's Professor Katie Keith Unpacks HHS's Recent Proposed Affordable Care Act Rule
Over the past 12 years the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has reduced the total number of uninsured Americans and low-income individuals more specifically by over 50% and by over 66% for young adults. In 2025 the ACA insured a record breaking 45
Professor Shannon Mussett Discusses Entropic Philosophy's Relevance to Our Health and Health Care
Podcast listeners are aware US healthcare, the largest industry in the world’s largest economy, consumes- and wastes a massive amount of carbon-based energy made painfully evident by the fact annual greenhouse gas emissions account for over
Attorney Alissa Smith Discusses Delivering Healthcare in the Face of (ICE) Immigration Enforcement
Listeners may recall I interviewed Ms. Smith early last March because the Trump administration immediately abandoned a decades old policy that forbade immigration enforcement at “protected [or sensitive] areas” that include healthcare facil
Resources for the Future Senior Fellow (and Former EPA Official) Dr. Bryan Hubbell Discusses the EPA's Assault on Clean Air
Over the past few weeks the Trump administration has significantly upped its game to eliminate greenhouse gas regulations that protect human and global health. The Sabin Center on Climate Change Law’s “Climate Backtracker” database presentl
Prof. John Abraham Discusses the Ongoing and Outrageous Rise in Ocean Heat Content
To begin my 14th year of podcasting, my 335th interview is with John Abraham, Professor of Thermal Science and Fluid Mechanics at the University of St. Thomas. Prof. Abraham joins me for a fifth time or for a fifth consecutive year to discu
Child Psychiatrist Frank Putnam Discusses His Soon-To-Be-Published book, "Old Before Their Time, A Scientific Life Investigating How Maltreatment Harms Children and the Adults They Become"
At least one in four girls suffers childhood sexual abuse. For example, the Department of Justice (DoJ) concluded Jeffery Epstein trafficked over 1,000 girls, some as young as 14. Nevertheless, six years after Epstein’s reported suicide, th
Harvard Professor Eram Alam Discusses Her Just-Published Book, "The Care of Foreigners, How Immigrant Physicians Changed US Healthcare"
The US has effectively always suffered a physician shortage. Last year the AMA estimated a shortage of 86,000 by 2035. US policymakers have since 1965 addressed this problem by recruiting foreign born physicians (termed Foreign Medical Grad
Georgetown Professor Linda Blumberg Discusses Commercial Health Insurance "Middlemen"
Over roughly the past year Prof. Blumberg and her Georgetown Center for Health Insurance Reform (CHIR) colleagues have been researching healthcare providers and payers increasing use of third-party entities they collectively termed “middlem
Prof. Troy Brennan Discusses His Just-Published, "Wonderful and Broken, The Complex Reality of Primary Care in the US"
Even though PC is the only component of healthcare shown to increase life expectancy and is crucial to achieving healthcare equity, outcomes, quality and value PC remains on life support. For example, an August National Academy of Medicine
Dr. Sachin Jain Discusses Ethical Erosion in Healthcare
Because healthcare today can be increasingly defined as commodified, expedient, financialized, myopic, reductionist and failing to transcend politics, the question of healthcare’s ethics or the roll ethics plays should play is increasingly
Drs. Michael Liu and Rishi Wadhera Discuss CMS's WISeR Medicare Demonstration
This past summer CMS, more specifically CMMI, announced a six-year Medicare Part A demonstration that would require hospitals in six states to submit claims for prior authorization (PA) approval by non-medical, CMS-contracted, 3rd party ent
Mr. Michael Millenson Discusses the (Tragic) State of Patient Safety
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines patient safety as “a framework of organized activities to reduce risks, lower the occurrence of avoidable harm, make errors less likely, and minimize their impact when they occur.” Over this past
Prof. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field Discusses Excess Deaths
Recently published research by Prof. Wrigley-Field and her colleagues found that between 1980 and 2023 the total number of US excess deaths equaled 14.7 million. Between 2010 and 2023 excess deaths ranged between 120% and 130% higher compar
Devin Kellis Argues for Extinction Medicine as a Medical Specialty
The greatest threat to human health is us. Humans are the only species capable of self-annihilation. For at least the past 30 years it has been acknowledged that the earth is presently experiencing its sixth mass extinction entirely caused
The Sabin Climate Law Center's Dr. Maria Antonia Tigre Discusses the ICJ's Recent Climate Advisory Opinion
On July 23rd the United Nations’ International Court of Justice (ICJ) announced its highly-anticipated climate advisory opinion. The opinion represents a watershed moment because the court ruled states or countries are accountable for contr
