The Political Orphanage

Author: Andrew Heaton

Politics minus bile plus jokes. Comedian and avowed independent Andrew Heaton interviews authors and thought leaders about policy and big thinky stuff.
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Genres: Comedy, News, Politics

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Europe is Freeloading on American Healthcare
Episode 662
Thursday, 8 October, 2026

Americans pay vastly more for medicine than citizens of other wealthy countries, but are those countries getting a bargain at our expense? David Goldhill, author of Catastrophic Care and founder and CEO of the healthcare marketplace Sesame, joins the show to explain why he considers American healthcare a kind of "second NATO"—one in which the United States shoulders a disproportionate share of the costs of medical innovation while the rest of the world reaps the benefits. We discuss why American healthcare is so outrageously expensive, whether adopting a European-style system would undermine medical innovation, why hospitals compete on everything except price, and whether healthcare can ever function like a normal market.