“As the scribbler of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only piece of health policy research that ranks states’ laws and regulations according to the principles of free markets and individual choice, I always look forward to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s State Snapshots, which derive from its National Healthcare Quality Report. State Snapshots is a very high quality publication, and does its best to focus on ‘hard’ measurements of health system performance (such as the percentage of heart attack victims administered a beta-blocker within 24 hours of admission), as opposed to measures of social interference (such as the fraction of children in a government health plan). As such, it is superior to other rankings that I have discussed.” (03/27/08)