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State finally winning fight against childhood obesity
5.24.2012
After years of dismal and discouraging data showing a seemingly inexorable rise in childhood obesity, recent research in California shows that the fight against this epidemic is finally starting to pay off.
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GOP Ready With Alternatives If ObamaCare's Repealed
5.24.2012
Republicans and Democrats alike are anxiously awaiting the Supreme Court's judgment regarding the constitutionality of President Obama's health care law, which is expected by June 25.
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Obamacare vs. employer-based health insurance
5.24.2012
The average family’s health benefits now cost more than $20,000, according to a new report from Milliman, a consultancy. American workers pick up about $8,500 of that tab, and their employers cover the rest.
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The Drug Re-Importation Re-Run: Not Worth Viewing
5.23.2012
Here we go again. Although efforts to legalize prescription drug importation have consistently failed in the past, supporters are at it again.
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The Tale of Two States
5.21.2012
Insight on California's $16 billion state budget deficit, with Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, host of "The Gavin Newsom Show," and Art Laffer, Laffer investments.
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Focus on Better Education Instead
5.21.2012
Falling back to 1970s-style desegregation policies like busing ignores new schooling options that weren’t available decades ago and which offer better educational opportunities for minority students.
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Defeating California's Water Crisis
5.16.2012
The California Department of Water Resources just took stock of the state’s water supplies. And while reservoirs appear well-stocked, officials are already urging residents to conserve water in preparation for an expected shortage in the summer of 2013.
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Not That the Obama Administration Has Noticed, But Drugs Are Expensive to Develop
5.14.2012
Last week, pharmaceutical company Roche announced that it was scrapping work on a once-promising cholesterol medicine at the recommendation of its independent data and safety monitoring board.
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Obama's Ed Policies Will Wreak Havoc on California Education
5.11.2012
When California agreed to replace its own rigorous state student-learning standards with the comparatively less difficult national standards supported by the Obama administration, questions immediately arose about the impact of this monumental shift on education practices in the state.
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New website allows taxpayers to calculate their public pensions
5.11.2012
If you were a public employee, what would your pension be?
PublicSectorInc.org, a project of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, has launched six new state calculators allowing taxpayers in Arizona, California, Louisiana, Montana, North Carolina, and Oklahoma to calculate how much they would receive in retirement benefits if they were public employees. Click here to calculate what your pension would be in one of these states.
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Big Government and Health-Care Stocks: A Happy Marriage?
What with the underwhelming market response to my previous article discussing the effect of the 2010 federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) on health insurers, I was pretty astonished (and relieved) to see Citigroup equity strategist Tobias Levkovich state many of the concerns which have occupied me.
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Leavitt: Most States Won't Have Exchanges By Deadline
Former U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services Mike Leavitt has announced that most states will not have Health Benefits Exchanges up and running by January 2014, when PPACA requires that they be covering patients who will have lost their employer-based benefits.
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Path Dependency in Medicare Reform
I first learned about path dependency when studying physics — but it surely applies to public policy, too. Despite the scholarly disputations about health reform, what drives most voters are not questions about the solvency of Medicare or beneficiaries’ access to care, but fear of change.
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Grim Reality of Medicare Reform
As one of the first conservatives to criticize Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform, I was pretty excited to read Andrew McCarthy’s spirited attack against the very existence of Medicare. According to McCarthy, it’s a wholesale scam, and he doesn’t mind telling everyone because he’s neither running for office nor responsible for getting anyone else elected.
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Politicizing Premiums Does Not Control Health Costs
Last week, an overwhelming majority of Connecticut legislators passed a bill, SB-11, that would give the executive branch the power to decide whether health plans should be allowed to increase their premiums at rates that keep pace with medical costs. Health plans may be a politically attractive target, but giving politicians the power to approve premiums causes other problems – and doesn’t even hold down rate increases.
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Will There Be Health Benefits Exchanges By 2014?
Despite advice from most free-market analysis, some Republican governors are executing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) by establishing Health Benefits Exchanges. These governors dislike PPACA, but they believe that exchanges can be vehicles for more choice than the federal law anticipates. But I think that the real news is how much difficulty states that want to implement PPACA as fast as possible are having. Read the entire article here.
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A Pfizer Break up? Maybe Not Such a Great Idea
In my second Forbes.com The Apothecary blog, I look again at the argument (supported by almost everyone on Wall Street) that Pfizer should be broken up. Certainly, there's a credible contrary view.
Read it here.
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Will Kathy Hochul Vote to Repeal Obamacare?
The surprise victory of the Democratic candidate in NY-26’s special election yesterday teaches a curious lesson: Seniors who rose up against Obamacare’s Medicare cuts at town-hall meetings in the summer of 2009 appear to have risen up against Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan in the spring of 2011.
Or maybe they didn't. Read more at National Review Online.
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Comparative-Effectiveness Research: How Many Lives Will It Cost?
I write a lot over at John Goodman's Health Policy Blog. For every original post, I also write about half a dozen comments on others' posts. I don't usually share the latter here.
However, I was interested to see Dr. Goodman's take on a new paper published by the Center for Medicines in the Public Interest, an outfit which is often tagged as simply a mouthpiece for Big Pharma. Here's what I wrote:
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A Pfizer Break Up? That Would Be Something
I have been afforded the great privilege of writing at Forbes Online. Avik Roy, an equity research analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co. in New York City, has invited me to collaborate with him on his blog, The Apothecary, which has been hosted by Forbes for a few months.
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