Tom Church

I'm a Policy Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford. I work on health care, entitlements, and the federal budget. Write me via email, or get new posts by subscribing on Substack.

New: Medicare for All Fixes Coverage for the Few by Breaking It for Everyone Else. Medicare for All designs health care around an exception, instead of allowing it to function for most people and then making exceptions for those who need help.

• Writing
• Research
• Podcasts
• Code

Writing

• For Medicare, Trust Fund Solvency Is the Wrong Number to Focus On
• A Waiver for the Jones Act Demonstrates Why You Shouldn't Artificially Restrict Markets
• Social Security (now) helps drive federal deficits
• The Many Parts Needed to Answer the Question: "How Do You Fix Health Care?"
• Did you pay for your Medicare benefits?

All 31 posts →

Research

• Refocusing Medicare Reform on Its Cost to Taxpayers with Lanhee J. Chen, JAMA Health Forum, 2026
• Expanding Access to HSAs: A Path to More Healthcare Choices for ACA Enrollees with Daniel L. Heil and Lanhee J. Chen, Hoover Institution, 2025 (PDF)
  Many high-deductible ACA plans lose HSA eligibility because their out-of-pocket limits grow with premiums. A fix would open HSAs to about 945,000 more people for roughly $1.7 billion over ten years.
• The Choices for All Project: Healthcare Reforms for the Future with Lanhee J. Chen and Daniel L. Heil, Hoover Institution, 2023 (PDF)
  Five reforms that put prices and choices in front of patients, with chapter summaries and downloads.
• The Fiscal Effects of the Public Option with Lanhee J. Chen and Daniel L. Heil, Hoover Institution, 2020 (PDF)
  Projected savings from a public option assume low provider payments and premiums that cover costs. If Congress behaves as it has before, the plan would add over $700 billion to the ten-year deficit.

All research →

Podcasts

584 Vetoes is a podcast about taxes, spending, and regulation, which I host with Brian Miller. [One line on the name.] Listen on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube, or subscribe by RSS.

• Ep 14The Lessons from Part D and Public-Private Partnerships for the Rest of Medicare with Eric Hargan
• Ep 13It’s Time for a Fiscal Commission to Fix the Debt w/Congressman Lloyd Smucker
• Ep 12Why Does Medicare Pay Different Prices for the Same Procedures? Site Neutral Payments w/Charlie Katebi
• Ep 11MAC Attack: The Regional Monopolies That Pay Your Medicare Claims with Karen Jackson

All 14 episodes →

Podcast appearances

• The Medicare Time Bomb: Can Washington Defuse It? Matters of Policy & Politics with Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution, Oct 9, 2026
• The Fiscal Effects of a Public Option Area 45, Hoover Institution

From 2021 to 2024 I hosted The Libertarian, Hoover's weekly conversation with Richard Epstein, for 124 episodes.

Code

1. TGAP, the Total Government Assistance Project. How much does the federal government spend on each American, and through which channels? An open-source, person-level ledger of federal assistance. Public release coming.