Michael F. Cannon is the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies. Cannon is “an influential health‐care wonk” (Washington Post), “ObamaCare’s single most relentless antagonist” (New Republic), “ObamaCare’s fiercest critic” (The Week), “the intellectual father” of King v. Burwell (Modern Healthcare), and “the most famous libertarian health care scholar” (Washington Examiner). Washingtonian magazine named Cannon one of Washington D.C.’s “Most Influential People” in both 2021 and 2022.
Cannon has appeared on ABC, Al Jazeera, BBC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, C‑SPAN, Fox News Channel, NPR, and other broadcast media. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal; the New York Times; USA Today; the Washington Post; the Los Angeles Times; the New York Post; the Chicago Tribune; the Chicago Sun‐Times; the San Francisco Chronicle; SCOTUSBlog; Huffington Post; Forum for Health Economics and Policy; JAMA Internal Medicine; Health Matrix: Journal of Law‐Medicine; Harvard Health Policy Review; the Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics; the Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law; and Quinnipiac Health Law Journal.
Cannon is the coeditor of Replacing Obamacare: The Cato Institute on Health Care Reform, author of 50 Vetoes: How States Can Stop the Obama Health Care Law, and coauthor of Healthy Competition: What’s Holding Back Health Care and How to Free It. Previously, he served as a domestic policy analyst for the U.S. Senate Republican Policy Committee, where he advised the Senate leadership on health, education, labor, welfare, and the Second Amendment.
Cannon holds an MA in economics and a JM in law and economics from George Mason University and a BA in American government from the University of Virginia. He is a member of the Board of Advisers of Harvard Health Policy Review and the Federalist Society Regulatory Transparency Project’s FDA & Health Working Group.