This section covers a lot of ground and includes things that might not seem like Healthcare policy at first.  Of course that’s one of the gotchas of public policy.  You start with something small, like improving health, and the next thing you know you have policies covering every conceivable aspect of life.

Policies affecting societal wealth and production; social safety net (medicare, social security, etc.)

Remember the fundamental premise; the best way to achieve good healthcare is to be rich…or at least not poor.  So it would make sense to prevent everyone from being poor, right?

Healthcare economics

• Healthcare Economics, (audio) Timothy Terrell
• Market for Quality Assurance (audio), Robert (Bob) Higgs (focuses on FDA)
• Probability and Insurance, (audio) Hans-Hermann Hoppe (this is pretty technical, but it explains why health insurance as we currently understand it is impossible)

Licensing

• Price Discrimination in Medicine (pdf), by Reuben Kessel. Classic article describing how Congress allows the AMA to increase the salaries of physicians by restricting the number of physicians while providing low cost “slave labor” to hospitals in the form of interns and residents.

Welfare State

• Origins of the Welfare State in America, by Murray Rothbard
• Teddy Roosevelt and the Origins of the Modern Welfare State, audio by Tom Woods
• The Therapeutic Welfare State, audio by Paul Gottfried
• Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Welfare State, audio by Paul Gottfried
• Welfare Inequality and the Welfare State, audio by William Anderson
• Foundation of Welfare Economics, audio by Jorg Guido Hulsmann
• Historians and the Welfare-Warfare State, audio by Joseph Stromberg
• Great Society and the Republican Welfare State, audio by Tom Woods

Social Security

• The Roots of the Social Security Myth (pdf), by John Attarian
• Peter Schiff interviews Social Security Trustee Charles Brahous (youtube)
  Retirement and Social Security: Case for Abolition (audio)
• Making Kids Worthless: Social Security’s Contribution to the Fertility Crisis, Oskari Juurikula
• Social Insecurity, Gary North
• Go to mises.org or FEE and search for Social Security.  There will be more than you can possibly imagine.
• Ideological Underpinnings of the Great Society, (audio) Robert Higgs

The Underclassed, Underprivileged, Poverty, and other Sundry Social Ills

• The Underclass Revisited (pdf) by Charles Murray
• The Conquest of Poverty, (pdf) Henry Hazlitt (choose any chapter)
  
• Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980, by Charles Murray (available at the PBA library (call number: HN 57.M84 1984)
• The Wage Gap: Sexism and Racism (talk), by Walter Block
• Retrospective on the Great Society, Adam Young
• Economics of Prohibition, (audio) Mark Thornton
• Minimum Wage Controversy, (audio) Roger Garrison

Environmental and Occupational Health Policies

• Safety Regulations, (audio) Art Carden
• Consumer Product Regulation (audio), Terri Terrell
• Environmental and Resource Economics, (audio) Art Carden
• Free Market and Job Safety, George Reisman
• Markets gave us leisure, Thomas DiLorenzo
• The Cost of Phosphorus, Jonathan Last

Nutrition

• The Washington Diet, by Steve Malanga (origin of the food pyramid)
• You are what you grow, by Michael Pollan
• Vitamins and the Government regulation, by Bill Sardi
• Turn the Food Pyramid on its head, (audio)
• Lacto-Fermentation and other ancient foods (audio)
• The Evils of Raw Milk
• You know you’re on to something when Alex Jones and the Huffington post agree.
• Fat is good, Dr Donald Miller
• Agricultural Policy (Lecture series)

Immunizations

• Flu shot or Vitamin D?, by Dr Donald Miller (When his hospital threatened to make him wear a mask if he didn’t get the flu shot, he started leaving this paper on administrators’ desks…they didn’t make him get the flu shot.)

Professional standards, organizations, restraint of trade

Healthcare research

Child labor, Abortion, Nutrition, Environmental and Occupational safety, Malaria

Healthcare reform; third party payors (includes discussion of other countries, such as Canada)

Disasters and Emergencies

• Disaster Medicine Preparedness (audio interview with Interview with Dr Bones and Nurse Amy)
• Doctors for Disaster Preparedness
• When the Trucks Stop America Stops (pdf)

Overpopulation

• Chapter 1 from All the Trouble in the World, by P.J. O’Rourke
• Malthus and the Assault on Population, (audio) by Murray Rothbard