One year later: what I read to understand healthcare policy in 2025

Another year in healthcare data and tech, and I got through another stack of reading and listening that deepened my understanding.

Books and long reads

• “The Hospital: Life, Death, and Dollars in a Small American Town” (Brian Alexander): How incentives and policy collide in real hospitals.
• “The Code” (Margaret O’Mara): How tech power and policy intertwine; helpful for understanding health tech policy dynamics.
• “Health Justice Now” (Tim Faust): Coverage, equity, and the limits of tech without policy change.
• Commonwealth Fund and RAND on price regulation/reference pricing: Data-driven looks at price controls in practice.
• Brookings papers on site-neutral payments and consolidation: How payment policy shapes market power.

People and voices

• Yubin Park: Data science and policy at the payer/provider intersection.

Podcasts and shows

• Health Affairs This Week: Quick policy updates with source links.
• The Health Care Policy Podcast (David Introcaso): Policy interviews beyond headlines.

Newsletters and blogs

• Health Tech Nerds (HTN): Operator-focused takes and Slack community on health tech and policy.

Primary sources and data

• Price Transparency MRFs and payer files: Still messy; reading them keeps the BS detector on.
• CMMI model evaluations: What actually worked in pilots versus press releases.