What's the Point of Health Insurance?

This episode originally premiered on August 25, 2020.

Historian Amity Shlaes joins us for a new look at the origins and aftermath of LBJ's Great Society – the massive federal poverty-reduction programs of the 1960's. The debates in that era were the same debates today: socialism vs capitalism, public-sector vs private-sector, victimhood vs self-empowerment. And the cost of these programs led to devastating outcomes which are still unfolding to this day.

Amity Shlaes’ most recent book is Great Society: A New History. She is the author of four New York Times bestsellers: The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man/Graphic, Coolidge, and The Greedy Hand: How Taxes Drive Americans Crazy. Miss Shlaes chairs the board of the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Foundation and the Manhattan Institute's Hayek Book Prize, and serves as a scholar at the King's College. A former member of the Wall Street Journal's editorial board, Miss Shlaes published a weekly syndicated column for more than a decade, appearing first in the Financial Times, then in Bloomberg. Follow her on Twitter at @AmityShlaes.