Health Care
Commentary
Trump order could cut your cost of health care and drugs
President Trump is expected to issue an executive order soon that could require insurers and hospitals to disclose the prices they’ve negotiated for various services. He hopes such transparency will increase competition and drive down health spending. The health care industry is less supportive. The nation’s top health insurance lobby, ...
Commentary
Don’t Legislate Away Biopharmaceutical Innovation
The U.S. economy thrives on innovation. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, industries that intensively rely on intellectual property (IP) protections, which includes the biopharmaceutical industry, account for nearly 40 percent of the U.S. economy and are responsible for an outsized share of our overall economic growth. Beyond the ...
Blog
“HELP-ing” to Make Health Care More Affordable
The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee has just released a bi-partisan bill authored by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that would make health care more affordable and more transparent for patients. These reforms are not grandiose fantasies that are destined to fail, such as ...
Commentary
Electronic Health Records Are Broken
A team of investigative reporters recently released a scathing analysisof the Obama administration’s decade-old push to digitize patient health records. The report, conducted by Fortune Magazine and Kaiser Health News, revealed that electronic health records were responsible for thousands of serious, even fatal, medical errors. Needless to say, this wasn’t what the Obama ...
Commentary
‘Medicare-for-all’ is worse than the CBO says it is (much worse)
This week, the House Budget Committee hosted three representatives from the Congressional Budget Office to discuss their new report analyzing the prospects for a single-payer health care system in America. Democrats used the CBO report as an excuse to plug their preferred plans for reform. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question ...
Commentary
Washington’s Cascade Care will bring a cascade of problems
Last week, Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., signed a bill to create a state-chartered insurance plan to be sold on the state’s insurance exchange. That makes the Evergreen State the first in the nation to offer a “public option.” State officials claim the new plan gives consumers one more option on the individual insurance market, ...
Commentary
The FDA’s Bad Medicine
Before leaving office, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told the Senate Appropriations Committee that Congress should create a new requirement for opioid approvals. New opioids should have to demonstrate superiority over those already on the market, he said. That would be a departure from the current statutory ...
Agriculture
FDA Moves to Level the Food-Labeling Playing Field
The FDA is charged with ensuring that the labeling of packaged foods is not “false or misleading in any particular,” as mandated by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. That ensures that consumers are not deceived and know what they’re paying for. In recent years, however, regulators’ enforcement priorities have ...
Commentary
Vaccines save lives. Deregulating them would save even more.
Measles is making a comeback. As of May 17, there were over 800 reported cases of the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than in any of the last four years. This uptick is dispiriting but shouldn’t be surprising. More and more people are ...
Commentary
Differentiating Health Care Costs from Health Care Value
The wrong model, no matter how hard you work it, will never provide the right answer. When it comes to how we pay for health care, the U.S. is using the wrong model. What’s worse, these financing inadequacies could threaten the viability of new therapies that will bring hope to ...
Trump order could cut your cost of health care and drugs
President Trump is expected to issue an executive order soon that could require insurers and hospitals to disclose the prices they’ve negotiated for various services. He hopes such transparency will increase competition and drive down health spending. The health care industry is less supportive. The nation’s top health insurance lobby, ...
Don’t Legislate Away Biopharmaceutical Innovation
The U.S. economy thrives on innovation. According to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, industries that intensively rely on intellectual property (IP) protections, which includes the biopharmaceutical industry, account for nearly 40 percent of the U.S. economy and are responsible for an outsized share of our overall economic growth. Beyond the ...
“HELP-ing” to Make Health Care More Affordable
The Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee has just released a bi-partisan bill authored by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Patty Murray (D-WA) that would make health care more affordable and more transparent for patients. These reforms are not grandiose fantasies that are destined to fail, such as ...
Electronic Health Records Are Broken
A team of investigative reporters recently released a scathing analysisof the Obama administration’s decade-old push to digitize patient health records. The report, conducted by Fortune Magazine and Kaiser Health News, revealed that electronic health records were responsible for thousands of serious, even fatal, medical errors. Needless to say, this wasn’t what the Obama ...
‘Medicare-for-all’ is worse than the CBO says it is (much worse)
This week, the House Budget Committee hosted three representatives from the Congressional Budget Office to discuss their new report analyzing the prospects for a single-payer health care system in America. Democrats used the CBO report as an excuse to plug their preferred plans for reform. “It’s not a question of if, it’s a question ...
Washington’s Cascade Care will bring a cascade of problems
Last week, Gov. Jay Inslee, D-Wash., signed a bill to create a state-chartered insurance plan to be sold on the state’s insurance exchange. That makes the Evergreen State the first in the nation to offer a “public option.” State officials claim the new plan gives consumers one more option on the individual insurance market, ...
The FDA’s Bad Medicine
Before leaving office, former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told the Senate Appropriations Committee that Congress should create a new requirement for opioid approvals. New opioids should have to demonstrate superiority over those already on the market, he said. That would be a departure from the current statutory ...
FDA Moves to Level the Food-Labeling Playing Field
The FDA is charged with ensuring that the labeling of packaged foods is not “false or misleading in any particular,” as mandated by the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. That ensures that consumers are not deceived and know what they’re paying for. In recent years, however, regulators’ enforcement priorities have ...
Vaccines save lives. Deregulating them would save even more.
Measles is making a comeback. As of May 17, there were over 800 reported cases of the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s more than in any of the last four years. This uptick is dispiriting but shouldn’t be surprising. More and more people are ...
Differentiating Health Care Costs from Health Care Value
The wrong model, no matter how hard you work it, will never provide the right answer. When it comes to how we pay for health care, the U.S. is using the wrong model. What’s worse, these financing inadequacies could threaten the viability of new therapies that will bring hope to ...
