JOHN C. GOODMAN is a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute. The Wall Street Journal and National Journal, among other media, have called him the “Father of Health Savings Accounts.”

Dr. Goodman received his Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University, and he is the author of nine books and more than fifty studies on health policy, retirement reform and tax issues. He regularly appears on Fox News Channel, CNN, PBS, Fox Business Network and CNBC, and his articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review, Health Affairs, Kaiser Health News, Psychology Today, and other national publications.

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John Goodman's book Priceless is revolutionizing thinking the debate over healthcare policy. He characterizes healthcare as a “complex system” that cannot be managed from the top down. True reform requires liberating doctors and patients by allowing them to interact in innovative ways to help meet unique individual medical needs.

The most important problems that plague American healthcare arise because we are trapped. Virtually all of us—patients, doctors, caregivers, employers, employees, etc.—are locked into a system fraught with perverse incentives that raise the cost of healthcare, reduce its quality, and make care less accessible than it should be.
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“John Goodman’s book Priceless provides more good thinking from the person who taught us that incentives matter.”
—Michael O. Leavitt, former Governor of Utah; former Secretary, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; former Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

“With his head for the practical and his heart for the disadvantaged, John Goodman has long been the clearest and most insightful healthcare thinker we have. Now that our perverse, accidental ‘insurance’ system has reached its inevitable crisis, it's time we acted on his common sense, fact-based wisdom in Priceless.”
—Mitch Daniels, former Governor of Indiana; President, Purdue University

“Priceless is an important contribution to a market-friendly approach to reforming healthcare.”
—Martin S. Feldstein, George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University; President Emeritus, National Bureau of Economic Research

“If liberal commentators wish to sharpen their claws, there is no better stone on which to do it than John Goodman’s book Priceless.”
—Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton University; former Commissioner, Physician Payment Review Commission

“While many people discuss the problems within our healthcare system, few propose real solutions. John Goodman has written a book that not only accurately describes what is happening with healthcare in our nation, it provides key solutions and answers to a problem that so desperately needs to be corrected.”
—Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida

“John Goodman, widely known as the father of health savings accounts, is as provocative and controversial as ever in his timely and important new book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis. His prescription for fixing what ails American healthcare is to free American consumers to seek the healthcare that best suits their needs and to free physicians and hospital administrators to provide the best, lowest cost care they can by getting rid of the constraints and disincentives provided by insurance companies and public payers. Essential reading for all who have been frustrated in their search for a workable solution to our healthcare woes.”
—Gail R. Wilensky, Senior Fellow, Project HOPE; former Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

“Instead of keeping the market from dealing with preexisting conditions, health care economist John C. Goodman argues, we should encourage it. In a new book, Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, Goodman offers an abundance of ways in which an unfettered market could address the problems of people with chronic medical needs. One proposal: Employers could buy health insurance that was fully portable—employees would own their policies and could take them from job to job. Another idea: Health Savings Accounts for the chronically ill that would allow disabled patients to manage their own budgets and choose the goods and services that best meet their needs. Still another: 'health status insurance,' which would allow individuals to protect themselves against the risk that a preexisting condition could emerge down the road and cause their insurance premiums to rise. What America’s health care landscape needs is more freedom and competition, not less.”
—Boston Globe

“John Goodman has been developing innovative ideas on how to create a better health system, a less expensive health system, a health system with more access for well over two decades. He really was the creator of the health-savings-account model and developed that entire initiative to try to give people increased resources and increased control over their health.”
—Newt Gingrich, 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives

“There’s no question that today's healthcare system is littered with distorted incentives and what John Goodman calls dysfunctionality. This book is a call to arms to do something about it. Even if you don’t agree with all of Goodman’s ideas—and there are plenty I disagree with—you should read this book if you want to be an informed participant in the debate over the future of healthcare in this country.”
—Peter R. Orszag, former Director, Congressional Budget Office; Vice Chairman, Global Banking, Citigroup, Inc.

“I have been following John Goodman’s health policy ideas for as long as I’ve been on Capitol Hill. John’s latest effort, Priceless: Curing the Health Care Crisis, makes it abundantly clear why he is a source of wisdom, insight, and innovative thinking.”
—Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House

“John Goodman is always interesting, always provocative. His ideas are not to be ignored.”
—Jim Cooper, U.S. Congressman (D-TN)

“Priceless illustrates the importance of market-based solutions to drive affordability, access, and higher quality experience for today’s empowered healthcare consumers.”
—Angela F. Braly, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, WellPoint, Inc.

“Priceless is unique in that it combines a general discussion of the issues in health; access, cost and quality, with specific implications of the Patient Protection and Affordable Act of 2009 on these same issues. The book is provocative and instructive, a combination that is difficult to pull off but done here in John Goodman’s style of combining humor with fact. This book should be on the reading list for everyone interested in healthcare reform.”
—Thomas R. Saving, Jeff Montgomery Professor of Economics and Director of Private Enterprise Research Center, Texas A & M University

“With Priceless, John Goodman has written a path-breaking book that everyone should read.”
—William A. Archer, Jr., former U.S. Congressman and Chairman, House Ways and Means Committee

“John Goodman is a highly influential health policy analyst, organization leader, and entrepreneur whose ideas are always provocative and simply can’t be ignored. You may not agree with every proposal he makes, but he is right on target when he notes that future solutions to unsustainable health-cost growth must convince consumers and patients that they gain from those reforms.”
—C. Eugene Steuerle, Institute Fellow and Richard B. Fisher Chair, Urban Institute

“In Priceless, Goodman argues that doctors are trapped in a dysfunctional system and they need to be liberated. He’s right. Restore liberty. End coercion.”
—Donald J. Palmisano, M.D., former President, American Medical Association

“In Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis, John Goodman explains why so many Americans—the sick, the healthy, consumers, employers, medical professionals and insurers—feel trapped by the U.S. healthcare system. Thankfully, he demonstrates that there are ways to escape the health-care traps, and his solutions deserve serious attention, regardless of one’s political persuasions.”
—John Engler, President, Business Roundtable; former Governor of Michigan

“In the sea of perplexity and inefficiency that characterizes health policy, John Goodman’s new book, Priceless, provides fresh and original insights to help steer us into a system that harnesses individual choice, aligns price and quality, and more effectively utilizes financing to achieve these ends.”
—June E. O’Neill, Wollman Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for the Study of Business and Government, Baruch College; former Director, Congressional Budget Office

“John Goodman's terrific book Priceless is indeed priceless. It offers a breath of fresh air in a tired healthcare debate that demonstrates once again that markets enjoy their greatest advantage in complex settings that call for imaginative solutions that no government-driven system can deliver. Critics may carp that healthcare markets are never perfectly competitive. Goodman offers chapter and verse to explain why market innovation beats top-down schemes by a mile—ACA especially included.”
—Richard A. Epstein, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University

“In Priceless, John Goodman provides a much needed perspective on healthcare issues—he is the leading proponent of using market-based reforms to solve health policy problems.”
—Kevin M. Murphy, George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, U. of Chicago

“John Goodman's analysis is incisive and compelling. The insight and innovative thinking in Priceless will be invaluable in avoiding the harms of government-run healthcare.”
—Steve Forbes, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, Forbes Media

“John Goodman's timely and important book Priceless has much to like. The presentation of healthcare economics is clear as is the discussion of the perverse incentives in health care. Good writing and clear explanations have always been hallmarks of Goodman's writing. I particularly like three aspects of this book: the consideration of the role of time prices and the surprising winners and losers that immerge from the healthcare reform legislation; the analysis of the political economy of healthcare systems and Goodman's explanation of why European systems look and act so differently from ours; and the policy prescriptions to reform health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid. Anyone seriously interested in understanding healthcare reform should look carefully at the proposals offered here.”
—Michael A. Morrisey, Professor of Health Economics and Health Insurance and Director of the Lister Hill Center for Health Policy, University of Alabama at Birmingham

“I have not agreed with Goodman's emphasis on high-deductible health insurance in health care… But no one who is serious about health reform can afford to ignore the ideas in Priceless.”
—Alain C. Enthoven, Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management Emeritus, Stanford University

“In Priceless, John Goodman's challenge to the conventional wisdom of a health care system broken because of excessive freedom can not be more timely. As we stand on the brink of hyper-regulating our system further, Goodman cogently argues that our answer is to free our system from the traps policymakers, insurers and providers have built over the decades.”
—Stephen T. Parente, Professor of Finance and Director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute, University of Minnesota

“John Goodman explains in Priceless why the health sector is so dysfunctional and why problems cannot be solved by adding even more layers of government bureaucracy, regulation, and price distortion. Goodman brings his clear thinking as an economist to explain how we could employ market forces in health care to realign incentives so patients, doctors, and all of the players in the health care marketplace are seeking greater efficiency, higher quality, and better value.”
—Grace-Marie Turner, President, Galen Institute

“From the author of Patient Power, Priceless is a new book about why we need to empower doctors as well as patients.”
—Daniel H. Johnson, Jr., M.D., former President, American Medical Association; former President, World Medical Association

“Everyone who wants to understand the mess Washington has made of health policy should read John Goodman's incisive book, Priceless. Generations of health reformers have tried to engineer a new system based on regulation and centralized control, only to find higher cost for health care that too often fails to provide value to patients. Goodman has a better idea: replace the perverse economic incentives of first dollar coverage and top-down regulation with real insurance, and let competition work.”
—Joseph R. Antos, Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy, American Enterprise Institute

“Too many American health economists have looked to government to solve healthcare problems, without realizing that government is the fundamental cause of these problems. John Goodman is the welcome exception and his innovative work has been influential in his creation of health savings accounts. His book Priceless is now full of equally useful ideas for restoring healthcare to the market, and when the ACA disappears this book will provide the framework for truly reforming healthcare for all.”
—Paul H. Rubin, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Economics, Emory University

“Priceless makes a very persuasive case that liberating people is the key to health reform. When we free the patients and the healthcare professionals from payer and government shackles, we will drive quality up and price down and eliminate an enormous amount of waste.”
—Stephen B. Bonner, President and Chief Executive Officer, Cancer Treatment Centers of America

“America is in perilous times. In Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis John Goodman deftly explains how to jettison the overgrown dysfunctional gridlock that prevents reform of healthcare and healthcare entitlements.”
—Earl L. Grinols, Distinguished Professor of Economics and Director of Doctoral Programs Development, Robbins Institute for Health Policy and Leadership, Baylor University

John C. Goodman on FoxNews on the Danger of an Obamacare “Death Spiral”
Wednesday, October 23, 2013