Welcome. This is Anastasia Yuglova bringing you the Cato Daily Podcast.

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Medicare is the greatest trick the devil has ever played,

a massive government program that promotes all seven deadly sins

as it drives the United States towards financial ruin.

That is the secret revealed on David Hyman's Medicare Meets

Mephistophiles, a new book published by the Cato Institute that takes a sharp

satirical look at how Medicare is spending itself into insolvency.

David, an adjunct scholar at Cato and professor of law and medicine at the University of Illinois,

joins us on the phone for a discussion of his book.

Why did you write this book?

Well, I'm a law professor and I write a fair amount about health care financing and regulation

and Medicare is a very important piece of that.

Bies a lot of health care.

It has a real impact on the way the health care marketplace looks.

It's also a program that has some huge problems, quality problems and cost problems.

And the striking thing is everybody knows about those but nobody seems to be doing much

about them and there have been books and books and articles

and white papers and so on, written about it,

and they collect dust in the library.

And so rather than write another one of those dusky books destined for oblivion

...