John R. Graham
Commentary
Fixing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: More money and power—or more competition?
Of all President Obama’s high-profile appointments, Dr. Margaret Hamburg’s nomination as U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner was probably the easiest. Coasting through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee to an unqualified chorus of praise, the eminently qualified Hamburg takes over an agency that many people ...
Commentary
Spinning the Polls
Perhaps humbled by its shellacking for hosting and broadcasting the Obama-infomercial on Wednesday, ABC and its collaborators at the Washington Post put a very different spin on a health-reform poll that has essentially the same results as the New York Times‘ one a few days ago. While the Gray Lady ...
Commentary
Robert Reich on Public Option
Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary, has the answer in today’s Wall Street Journal. According to Mr. Reich, a “public option” (actually a swamp of new government bureaucracies, ready from “day one” for perpetual taxpayer bailouts), would “squeeze” the profits of private health providers. It is dead easy for government ...
Health Care
Health Care’s Future: Mexican Medical Tourism for Californians?
Immigrants continue to show up in California, where many become part of our 18.5 percent uninsured population. A more neglected story is traffic the other way, California residents crossing the border for treatment in Mexico, outlined in new research by Steven P. Wallace of UCLA. Professor Wallace and colleagues conclude ...
Commentary
New Entry for Worst Study of the Year Award
As with previous studies of medical bankruptcy, this study puts forward a number of definitions of “medical bankruptcy” and defines any bankruptcy with any one of these conditions as suffering medical bankruptcy. The one that immediately stands out is “medical bills over $5,000 or 10 percent of household income on ...
Business & Economics
Why No Health Tax Reform? A Conservative’s Inside View
Mr. Wulsin has done a great job of explaining the pernicious effects of the current exclusion of employer-sponsored benefits from taxable income (which I also addressed in an earlier contribution). Mr. Wulsin and I are hardly the only ones who have noted this. Last June, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber told ...
Commentary
Obama’s health reforms: Freddie Doc and Fannie Med
IN the battle over health reform, one issue has emerged as particularly divisive – the president’s proposed government health plan that would compete with private insurers. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer recently promised that such a program would be immune to perpetual taxpayer bailouts because he would ensure that it would ...
Commentary
Yes, I Do Have a Nerve
Well, I’m in the same boat. So, I’ll be happy to enter into a “compact” with Mr. Wright (and everybody else): if he’ll ask the government to return the share of my paycheck that it has taken for Medicare, which his parents use, then I’ll ask the government to return ...
Commentary
Health Freedom Returns to Arizona
Last November, Arizona’s Proposition 101 was narrowly defeated at the ballot box. Prop 101 would have prevented the government from enrolling people in a government or private health plan against their choice, or otherwise preventing them from spending their own money on their own health care. But good ideas never ...
Health Care
Testimony of John R. Graham, Director of Health Care Studies, Pacific Research Institute to Arizona House Health & Human Services
Thank you for inviting me here today to speak about the importance of the Arizona Health Care Freedom Act, HCR 2014. I believe that this bill is critical to Arizonans’ individual choice in health care, and a bulwark against undue government control of their access to health services. I am ...
Fixing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration: More money and power—or more competition?
Of all President Obama’s high-profile appointments, Dr. Margaret Hamburg’s nomination as U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner was probably the easiest. Coasting through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee to an unqualified chorus of praise, the eminently qualified Hamburg takes over an agency that many people ...
Spinning the Polls
Perhaps humbled by its shellacking for hosting and broadcasting the Obama-infomercial on Wednesday, ABC and its collaborators at the Washington Post put a very different spin on a health-reform poll that has essentially the same results as the New York Times‘ one a few days ago. While the Gray Lady ...
Robert Reich on Public Option
Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Labor Secretary, has the answer in today’s Wall Street Journal. According to Mr. Reich, a “public option” (actually a swamp of new government bureaucracies, ready from “day one” for perpetual taxpayer bailouts), would “squeeze” the profits of private health providers. It is dead easy for government ...
Health Care’s Future: Mexican Medical Tourism for Californians?
Immigrants continue to show up in California, where many become part of our 18.5 percent uninsured population. A more neglected story is traffic the other way, California residents crossing the border for treatment in Mexico, outlined in new research by Steven P. Wallace of UCLA. Professor Wallace and colleagues conclude ...
New Entry for Worst Study of the Year Award
As with previous studies of medical bankruptcy, this study puts forward a number of definitions of “medical bankruptcy” and defines any bankruptcy with any one of these conditions as suffering medical bankruptcy. The one that immediately stands out is “medical bills over $5,000 or 10 percent of household income on ...
Why No Health Tax Reform? A Conservative’s Inside View
Mr. Wulsin has done a great job of explaining the pernicious effects of the current exclusion of employer-sponsored benefits from taxable income (which I also addressed in an earlier contribution). Mr. Wulsin and I are hardly the only ones who have noted this. Last June, MIT economist Jonathan Gruber told ...
Obama’s health reforms: Freddie Doc and Fannie Med
IN the battle over health reform, one issue has emerged as particularly divisive – the president’s proposed government health plan that would compete with private insurers. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer recently promised that such a program would be immune to perpetual taxpayer bailouts because he would ensure that it would ...
Yes, I Do Have a Nerve
Well, I’m in the same boat. So, I’ll be happy to enter into a “compact” with Mr. Wright (and everybody else): if he’ll ask the government to return the share of my paycheck that it has taken for Medicare, which his parents use, then I’ll ask the government to return ...
Health Freedom Returns to Arizona
Last November, Arizona’s Proposition 101 was narrowly defeated at the ballot box. Prop 101 would have prevented the government from enrolling people in a government or private health plan against their choice, or otherwise preventing them from spending their own money on their own health care. But good ideas never ...
Testimony of John R. Graham, Director of Health Care Studies, Pacific Research Institute to Arizona House Health & Human Services
Thank you for inviting me here today to speak about the importance of the Arizona Health Care Freedom Act, HCR 2014. I believe that this bill is critical to Arizonans’ individual choice in health care, and a bulwark against undue government control of their access to health services. I am ...
