John R. Graham

Time, once again, to defend the indefensible….. Health Net is reeling from a one-two punch. Last Wednesday, Rocky Delgadillo, the Los Angeles City Attorney filed civil suit against the for-profit health insurer, alleging unfair business practices and false advertising. Then, last Thursday, an arbitrator gave over $9 million to a ...

WASHINGTON – With the writers’ strike at an end, couch potatoes can sigh with relief. But imagine if labor strife had befallen a far more critical group of individuals — like doctors. The notion of white coats on the picket lines is not as far-fetched as it may seem. Some ...

An amazing story in the usually reliable Boston Globe by Steve LeBlanc made me gulp: might I have to recant my position on the ineffective and expensive Massachusetts health reform? Luckily, no: a report by the Massachusetts Hospital Association on the reform’s “success” manages to fudge the numbers just enough ...

David Lazarus claims that direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising results in “forcing physicians to respond to people’s demands for heavily touted drugs.” (“Ads spur urge for drugs,” Consumer Confidential, Feb. 6.) Actually, physicians have a government-granted monopoly on prescribing drugs, and no patient can “force” a physician to do anything. Rather, research ...

It’s been a couple of months since New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, scourge of the health insurers, has caused me to address the sorry state of the Empire State’s political direction on health reform. Last time, I expressed concern (and perhaps a little contrition) that I was too hard ...

I have written quite a few times about California’s regulatory adventurism that has made it impossible for health insurers to assess and price health risks in the market for individual health insurance, despite the fact that it is legal to do so. (Although, the recently defeated California Health Care Deforminator, ...

Even at the glacial pace of take-over activities in the post-credit meltdown deal economy, merger arbitrageurs speculating on the UnitedHealth-Sierra Health Services spread might be forgiven for dozing off at their trading terminals. Almost a year ago, on March 12, UnitedHealth Group (headquartered in Minneapolis), announced a friendly take-over of ...

Suppose that American politicians decided that spending on roads and highways was “unsustainable.” How could they cut those costs? One tactic would be to pass laws banning automobile advertising. Governments would invest in research showing that automobile ads are inaccurate and confusing. Because car manufacturers are only interested in profits, ...

On January 31, Shikha Dahlia of the Reason Foundation wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, “Saying No to Coercive Care”. It was great to see someone from Reason Foundation have a swing at the piñata: after all, it was back in November 2004 that Ronald Bailey wrote a ...