This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, November 6, 2023.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Fans of at least the promise of Obamacare, less expensive, more secure health care options, should also be fans of handing

the bulk of the control of health care dollars to the individuals who will consume that health

care.

Michael Cannon details how the elegant intuitive solution works in

his new book, Recovery, a guide to reforming the US health sector. We spoke last week.

In the run-up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act, what were the big ticket promises

that Barack Obama and others made on behalf of that act in order to improve American health care.

A lot of those promises are right there in the title.

The official title of the law is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

They were promising to protect patients from insurance company

practices that a lot of people don't like. They were promising to protect

patients from

unaffordable medical bills, making health care more affordable, all with the goal of making health care universal.

And you know you have a series of proposals laid out in your new book recovery that you say

fans of those promises that the Affordable Care Act made should love. What are they? They fall under two headings, but even those

two headings flow from the basic principle that you have rights when it comes to your

health care, the most important right you have rights when it comes to your health care, the most important right you have when it comes to your health care is the right to make your own health decisions.

And that means you should be able to control your health care dollars and you should be able to control how you spend them and all the health

decisions that follow. Unfortunately, patients, consumers in the United States don't have that freedom,

they don't have that level of control. And so in the book I propose a series of reforms that would give them

...