Wayne Winegarden
Business & Economics
The Expanding Broadband Infrastructure Is A Private Sector Success Story
Recent data on prices provides important perspective regarding the $65 billion that Congress and President Biden will now spend on broadband infrastructure over the next ten years. According to the White House, the purpose of these expenditures is to help ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet through ...
Health Care
The Flawed Third-Party Payer System Drives the Drug Affordability Problem
CLICK TO READ THE REPORT The problem of drug affordability is caused by the perverse incentives created by the third-party payer system that have disempowered patients in favor of insurers and other supply-chain intermediaries. The insurance flaws have created pricing systems that inequitably transfer a disproportionate share of drug costs ...
Commentary
Violating Manufacturer’s Property Rights Does Not Promote Healthy Competition
Too often, regulations undermine the competitive process in the name of promoting competition. The ill-conceived Right to Repair legislation exemplify the problems and risks. Under the pretense of promoting competition, states as diverse as Texas and California, Arkansas and Hawaii have all considered bills that would violate medical device companies’ intellectual property rights. While many have been defeated, ...
Business & Economics
NEW STUDY: Bad Policy Choices Zap Californians with $1450 Average Electricity Bills
Californians are being zapped with higher electricity bills – averaging $1450 per year – thanks to state government energy regulations, taxes, and subsidies, finds a new report released today by the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute. Repealing or reforming these costly policies could save the average household $517 per year, ...
Commentary
Drug discount program padding hospital profits
Improving vulnerable populations’ access to medicines is clearly important. But something is amiss when a program that is supposed to improve access to healthcare has turned into a cash cow for hospitals. Yet, that is what has happened to the obscure 340B drug discount program. Too many hospitals across Massachusetts ...
Commentary
Comprehensive Regulatory Reform From The Bottom Up: The Case Of 340B
Using the ruse of “price negotiation”, the proponents of the Build Back Better legislation are pushing an ill-fated drug price control plan. Patients will bear exceptionally large costs should their idea of government-directed prices become law. These costs will include lower health outcomes due to reduced access to innovative drugs. ...
Blog
Inflation, Drug Price Controls, and President Biden’s Build Back Better Program
Inflation is worrying Americans, and for good reason. The latest inflation report, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) released on November 10th, showed that prices were 6.2 percent higher in October 2021 compared to October 2020. More troubling, this was the fifth month in a row where the annual growth in ...
Climate Change
Expand competitive power markets, not regulations and subsidies, to address global climate change
The twenty-sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow is finally upon us. Yet, despite all the previous meetings and government pledges, global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) have not yet peaked. In fact, if current policies continue unabated, ...
Business & Economics
Federal Covid-19 Response Hurt Small Business, Threatens Future Of American Entrepreneurship
Small business owners and entrepreneurs have plenty of barriers to success without considering the costs from the COVID-19 pandemic. High and excessively complex tax laws, the anti-growth reconciliation bill, and regulatory burdens like the pending congressional “Right to Work” bill and California’s AB5 law that is going national through the PRO ...
Blog
Getting the Drug Spending Facts Right
In a typical rant, Senator Sanders claimed in a September 15th press release that “at a time when the drug companies are charging us by far the highest prices in the world, Congress must demand that Medicare negotiate prices with this extremely greedy and powerful industry.” The Senator clearly misunderstands ...
The Expanding Broadband Infrastructure Is A Private Sector Success Story
Recent data on prices provides important perspective regarding the $65 billion that Congress and President Biden will now spend on broadband infrastructure over the next ten years. According to the White House, the purpose of these expenditures is to help ensure that every American has access to reliable high-speed internet through ...
The Flawed Third-Party Payer System Drives the Drug Affordability Problem
CLICK TO READ THE REPORT The problem of drug affordability is caused by the perverse incentives created by the third-party payer system that have disempowered patients in favor of insurers and other supply-chain intermediaries. The insurance flaws have created pricing systems that inequitably transfer a disproportionate share of drug costs ...
Violating Manufacturer’s Property Rights Does Not Promote Healthy Competition
Too often, regulations undermine the competitive process in the name of promoting competition. The ill-conceived Right to Repair legislation exemplify the problems and risks. Under the pretense of promoting competition, states as diverse as Texas and California, Arkansas and Hawaii have all considered bills that would violate medical device companies’ intellectual property rights. While many have been defeated, ...
NEW STUDY: Bad Policy Choices Zap Californians with $1450 Average Electricity Bills
Californians are being zapped with higher electricity bills – averaging $1450 per year – thanks to state government energy regulations, taxes, and subsidies, finds a new report released today by the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute. Repealing or reforming these costly policies could save the average household $517 per year, ...
Drug discount program padding hospital profits
Improving vulnerable populations’ access to medicines is clearly important. But something is amiss when a program that is supposed to improve access to healthcare has turned into a cash cow for hospitals. Yet, that is what has happened to the obscure 340B drug discount program. Too many hospitals across Massachusetts ...
Comprehensive Regulatory Reform From The Bottom Up: The Case Of 340B
Using the ruse of “price negotiation”, the proponents of the Build Back Better legislation are pushing an ill-fated drug price control plan. Patients will bear exceptionally large costs should their idea of government-directed prices become law. These costs will include lower health outcomes due to reduced access to innovative drugs. ...
Inflation, Drug Price Controls, and President Biden’s Build Back Better Program
Inflation is worrying Americans, and for good reason. The latest inflation report, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) released on November 10th, showed that prices were 6.2 percent higher in October 2021 compared to October 2020. More troubling, this was the fifth month in a row where the annual growth in ...
Expand competitive power markets, not regulations and subsidies, to address global climate change
The twenty-sixth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 26) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Glasgow is finally upon us. Yet, despite all the previous meetings and government pledges, global greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) have not yet peaked. In fact, if current policies continue unabated, ...
Federal Covid-19 Response Hurt Small Business, Threatens Future Of American Entrepreneurship
Small business owners and entrepreneurs have plenty of barriers to success without considering the costs from the COVID-19 pandemic. High and excessively complex tax laws, the anti-growth reconciliation bill, and regulatory burdens like the pending congressional “Right to Work” bill and California’s AB5 law that is going national through the PRO ...
Getting the Drug Spending Facts Right
In a typical rant, Senator Sanders claimed in a September 15th press release that “at a time when the drug companies are charging us by far the highest prices in the world, Congress must demand that Medicare negotiate prices with this extremely greedy and powerful industry.” The Senator clearly misunderstands ...
