Mother of Invention: How the Government Created “Free‐Market” Health Care, by Robert I. Field, 2014, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 297 pp. ISBN 978‐0‐19‐974675‐0.

• Published date: 01 June 2014
• Date: 01 June 2014
• Author: Robert Lieberthal
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jori.12048

BOOK REVIEW

Mother of Invention: How the Government Created “Free‐Market”Health Care, by Robert I.

Field, 2014, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 297 pp. ISBN 978-0-19-974675-0.

Reviewer: Robert Lieberthal, Jefferson School of Population Health; Robert.

Lieberthal@jefferson.edu

Health-care costs have become a major economic and political issue in the United

States over the last decade. The most important recent policy response to the level of

spending in the United States, as well as the number of individuals without health

insurance, was the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010. Indeed, the

percentage of the population without health insurance makes the United States an

anomaly among developed countries. Health insurance coverage is universal or near-

universal in all but three member countries of the Organisation for Economic

Co-operation and Development (OECD): Mexico, the United States, and Chile. The

United States is also distinguished by the fact that a majority of the population is

covered by private health insurance, in contrast to other developed countries (OECD,

2013).

1

Thus, the unique features of the U.S. system may allow for important

conclusions about how risks related to health shocks are managed through health

insurance and the role of public policy in financing and delivering health care.

Despite the role of private insurance in the U.S. health-care system, Mother of

Invention: How the Government Created “Free‐Market”Health Care, a new book from

Robert Field, puts public policy front and center as the explanation for the way the

health-care industry is structured and financed in the United States. In this work,

Field, a Professor of Law and Health Management and Policy at Drexel University,

makes the case that the government has been intimately involved in the evolution of

the major sectors of the U.S. health-care system, including the pharmaceutical

industry, hospital industry, medical profession, and health insurance industry. This

contention is a sweeping thesis regarding the entirety of health care in the United

States. This book provides a valuable contribution to the literature on health care and

health insurance by examining both the involvement of government in creating the

United States’s current insurance system, and in showing how government

involvement in other parts of the health-care system have impacted health insurance.

1

Germany is one exception, with 11 percent of its citizens covered by primary private health

insurance.

© The Journal of Risk and Insurance, 2014, Vol. 81, No. 2, 469–472

DOI: 10.1111/jori.12048

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