John R. Graham
Health Care
Why Consumer-Driven Health Care is Crashing on the Shoals of Medicare
Last month’s Medicare Trustees’ report confirms that Medicare is going bankrupt faster than Social Security, even though they serve the same population. Social Security subsidizes demand by seniors for all goods and services, whereas Medicare subsidizes the supply of health goods and services to seniors at fixed prices, which creates ...
Commentary
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Why Are Activists Still Blocking It?
Only one, small, for-profit hospital has stepped forward to take the risk of re-opening a Los Angeles County community hospital that had such an atrocious record that the County closed it last August. Recognizing its own incompetence, the County Board of Supervisors decided that the hospital should not re-open under ...
California
Families USA’s Death Train Chugs Into California
I wish that I had the PR skills of Families USA. When I released the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, comparing government interference in health care across the land, I only did it once. Families USA has figured out that if it releases the same analysis for each state on ...
Commentary
There is good in drug advertising
There was quite an uproar when the politicians who decide what information Americans may or may not see attacked Pfizer for using a certain physician in its ad campaign for Lipitor, the popular anti-cholesterol pill. Remarkably, the spokesperson, Dr. Robert Jarvik, was the inventor of the first artificial heart. Apparently, ...
Commentary
Corruption & Waste in New Jersey’s State Health Plans
Back in September, President Bush held the line on Congressional Democrats’ (and many Republicans’) irresponsible plan to make more American kids dependent on government health care. Congress proposed to expand SCHIP (state government health insurance program) grants into the middle class, which drew a rare response of relative fiscal responsibility ...
California
Unbalanced Medical Billing in California
Imagine if you bought an airline ticket to fly from San Francisco to Chicago and, after the flight, you received another, extra, bill from the co-pilot for what he claims is a fair price for his services flying the plane. He is unsatisfied with the airline’s pay, and would like ...
Commentary
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Union Power Trumps Patient Rights
Way back last August, I wrote about the tragic closure of Los Angeles’ Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor hospital, the County’s safety-net hospital for LA’s troubled Watts neighborhood. After 35 years of government mismanagement, the death of a woman abandoned on the ER floor for three quarters of an hour was ...
Business & Economics
Alaska’s Tort Gold Rush Stalls: Eli Lilly Shakedown Stumbles
Back in 2006, Alaska’s Attorney-General (like many others) decided he could mine some gold from a successful drug company: in this case, Eli Lilly & Co. Zyprexa, a successful psychiatric drug from Lilly, has also been associated with the side effect of obesity. Alaska alleged that Lilly was slow to ...
Health Care
Ranking Health Care in the States: Promises and Pitfalls
As the scribbler of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only piece of health policy research that ranks states’ laws and regulations according to the principles of free markets and individual choice, I always look forward to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s State Snapshots, which derive from ...
Commentary
Los Angeles Times Health Care Whiplash!
Reading the Los Angeles Times, you might think there are two different Los Angeles, in two parallel universes. On the one hand, Karl Mannheim and Jamie Court criticize Hillary Clinton’s and Barrack Obama’s proposals for mandatory, private, health insurance by correctly asserting that that the Constitution does not give lawmakers ...
Why Consumer-Driven Health Care is Crashing on the Shoals of Medicare
Last month’s Medicare Trustees’ report confirms that Medicare is going bankrupt faster than Social Security, even though they serve the same population. Social Security subsidizes demand by seniors for all goods and services, whereas Medicare subsidizes the supply of health goods and services to seniors at fixed prices, which creates ...
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Why Are Activists Still Blocking It?
Only one, small, for-profit hospital has stepped forward to take the risk of re-opening a Los Angeles County community hospital that had such an atrocious record that the County closed it last August. Recognizing its own incompetence, the County Board of Supervisors decided that the hospital should not re-open under ...
Families USA’s Death Train Chugs Into California
I wish that I had the PR skills of Families USA. When I released the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, comparing government interference in health care across the land, I only did it once. Families USA has figured out that if it releases the same analysis for each state on ...
There is good in drug advertising
There was quite an uproar when the politicians who decide what information Americans may or may not see attacked Pfizer for using a certain physician in its ad campaign for Lipitor, the popular anti-cholesterol pill. Remarkably, the spokesperson, Dr. Robert Jarvik, was the inventor of the first artificial heart. Apparently, ...
Corruption & Waste in New Jersey’s State Health Plans
Back in September, President Bush held the line on Congressional Democrats’ (and many Republicans’) irresponsible plan to make more American kids dependent on government health care. Congress proposed to expand SCHIP (state government health insurance program) grants into the middle class, which drew a rare response of relative fiscal responsibility ...
Unbalanced Medical Billing in California
Imagine if you bought an airline ticket to fly from San Francisco to Chicago and, after the flight, you received another, extra, bill from the co-pilot for what he claims is a fair price for his services flying the plane. He is unsatisfied with the airline’s pay, and would like ...
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Union Power Trumps Patient Rights
Way back last August, I wrote about the tragic closure of Los Angeles’ Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor hospital, the County’s safety-net hospital for LA’s troubled Watts neighborhood. After 35 years of government mismanagement, the death of a woman abandoned on the ER floor for three quarters of an hour was ...
Alaska’s Tort Gold Rush Stalls: Eli Lilly Shakedown Stumbles
Back in 2006, Alaska’s Attorney-General (like many others) decided he could mine some gold from a successful drug company: in this case, Eli Lilly & Co. Zyprexa, a successful psychiatric drug from Lilly, has also been associated with the side effect of obesity. Alaska alleged that Lilly was slow to ...
Ranking Health Care in the States: Promises and Pitfalls
As the scribbler of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only piece of health policy research that ranks states’ laws and regulations according to the principles of free markets and individual choice, I always look forward to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s State Snapshots, which derive from ...
Los Angeles Times Health Care Whiplash!
Reading the Los Angeles Times, you might think there are two different Los Angeles, in two parallel universes. On the one hand, Karl Mannheim and Jamie Court criticize Hillary Clinton’s and Barrack Obama’s proposals for mandatory, private, health insurance by correctly asserting that that the Constitution does not give lawmakers ...
