The Medical Freedom Channel

“If you struggled with the choice of a newfangled high-deductible health insurance option during open enrollment this fall, you can thank — or perhaps curse — conservative economist John C. Goodman for the experience. The 60-year-old founder of the Dallas-based National Center for Policy Analysis did not devise the idea of creating tax-favored medical savings accounts and pairing them with high-deductible insurance, but he pushed longer and harder in Washington than anyone else to make ‘consumer-directed’ health plans a reality. For more than a dozen years, Goodman wrote articles, gave speeches and buttonholed lawmakers to tout the idea, achieving only modest success before the Bush administration embraced the concept and the GOP-controlled Congress in 2003 paved the way for insurers to offer such plans.” (12/28/06)