Free Markets, Private Equity, and the Moral Case for Medicine — The Doctors’ Lounge

Episode Summary

Jared Rhoads, founder of the Center for Modern Health and senior lecturer in health policy at the Dartmouth Institute, joins Drs. Koka and DiGiorgio for a wide-ranging conversation on the philosophical foundations of healthcare policy. Rhoads — an Objectivist in the tradition of Ayn Rand — argues that physicians have a right to pursue health, not a right to be given it, and walks through what that distinction means for real policy debates: FDA drug approval, prior authorization, the ban on physician-owned hospitals, private equity in medicine, and foreign-trained physician licensure. The episode is a rare attempt to make the moral case for free markets in medicine, not just the efficiency case.

Chapter Markers

00:00 Introduction and guest background

01:52 What is the Center for Modern Health?

04:25 Objectivism, Ayn Rand, and rational self-interest

11:19 Healthcare as a private good vs. community good

13:58 Policy mistakes made for edge cases

16:58 You have a right to pursue health — not to be given it

20:14 Does Medicare violate rights?

22:47 Positive vs. negative rights in healthcare

24:47 The FDA, drug approval, and the Prasad/McCary departures

31:08 A two-tier FDA review proposal: private vs. public payers

42:25 Breaking up Big Medicine — the Hawley-Warren bill