Suggested Readings: Risk and Rational Planning

A Life of One Own: Individual Rights and the Welfare State
By David Kelley
ISBN: 1-882577-70-1

"At a time when many people are coming to the realization that our welfare system needs to be overhauled, it is increasingly important to question the system's central premises. Kelley accepts this challenge, exposing a system based on faulty assumptions and lacking incentives for personal responsibility."
— Judge Alex Kozinski, U.S. Ninth Circuit Court

Medicare's Midlife Crisis
By Sue A. Blevins
ISBN: 1-930865-08-2

"Sue Blevins painstakingly documents not just the dry legislative history but also the backroom political maneuvering that resulted in the Medicare program we have today. Her most disturbing revelation is of new evidence suggesting that government officials misled the public regarding the true cost of the Medicare program in order to gain its enactment."
—Roland E. (Guy) King, former chief actuary, Health Care Financing Administration

American Health Care: Government, Market Processes, and the Public Interest
By Roger D. Feldman
ISBN: 1-56000-430-4

"This new volume contains some of the country's best thinkers about how private health markets interact with government and politicians. Their excellent analysis of the history, economics, and politics of American health policy helps explain why health-care markets sometimes fail and why government efforts to correct market failures are often worse."
—Robert B. Helms, director, health policy studies, American Enterprise Institute

From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967
By David T. Beito
ISBN:0-8078-4841-7

"[Beito's] detailed scholarship proves that people [before the New Deal] fulfilled their needs and desire for community and security by organizing voluntary systems of insurance and group enterprise. The book represents a compelling chapter in the history and character of American society, as well as a lesson in the fertility of non-government civic action."
—Daniel B. Klein, author of Reputation: Studies in the Voluntary Elicitation of Good Conduct