Health Care
Commentary
A $44,000 Surgery Can Cost Just $16,000 Somewhere Else for One Reason: Competition
A hip replacement in Maine can run north of $44,000. Down the coast in Boston, it’s a different story. There, the same procedure costs just more than $16,000, a fraction of the price. Knee surgeries follow the same pattern. They cost up to $13,500 in Maine, but as little as $3,900 ...
Commentary
Here’s a prescription for mid-sized businesses providing workers with health care
Small businesses and large corporations have been spared some of Obamacare’s most burdensome regulations. Small firms are exempt from the employer mandate requiring them to offer coverage. Large ones don’t have to adhere to the law’s essential health benefits mandates. Mid-sized businesses haven’t been so lucky. These firms, which typically ...
California
March 18 – Free-Market Solutions to California’s Health Care Challenges
In part 1 of a special 4-part series on how free-market ideas can build new, diverse coalitions in California, PRI’s Sally Pipes, Wayne Winegarden, and Henry Miller discuss how proposals like single-payer health care and new mandates on prescription drugs would hurt innovation and how market-based policies can better address ...
Commentary
Medicare for All Won’t Result in Better Health Outcomes
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker claims Medicare for All would “save lives.” Vermont’s own Senator Bernie Sanders promises it would end “the disgrace of tens of thousands of Americans dying every year from preventable deaths.” But a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds little evidence to support those assertions. The authors examined ...
Commentary
Desperately Seeking a Reformer to Head the FDA
Federal regulation affects our lives every day in more ways than we realize. The Food and Drug Administration alone regulates products that account for more than a trillion dollars annually—25 cents of every consumer dollar; and the average cost (including out-of-pocket expenses and opportunity costs) to bring a new drug ...
Agriculture
America’s Citrus Fruits Are Being Decimated By An Incurable Disease — We Need GM Science to Save Them
Farmers in the major U.S. citrus-producing regions—Florida, California, Texas and Arizona, in particular—are facing a plague of epic proportions. Oranges and a range of other citrus fruits are being decimated by an incurable disease, a lethal, bacterial infection known as “citrus greening”—or Huanglongbing. It is spread by a tiny insect, ...
Commentary
Feds battle opioid abuse with a circular firing squad
By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and Josh Bloom, Ph.D. The ongoing battle to control opioid addiction has not gone well. Many of the government’s efforts have been medically and scientifically flawed and unproductive. Some have even been counterproductive. Public policy is in disarray. A Feb. 1 article in the Journal of ...
Commentary
Research integrity and why bad science has become such a problem
By S. Stanley Young and Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. Science depends on corroboration — that is, researchers verify others’ results, often making incremental advances as they do so. The nature of science dictates that no research paper is ever considered to be the final word, but increasingly, there are ...
Commentary
The FDA has problems — Here are the qualities the next commissioner must have to fix them
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the nation’s most ubiquitous regulatory agency. It oversees a vast array of medical and food products that account for 25 cents of every consumer dollar, with a value of over a trillion dollars annually. And the agency has problems. It’s too risk-averse, bureaucratically ...
Agriculture
Americans Who Want Socialism Should Consider Moving to California
Trump adviser and distinguished economist Larry Kudlow wants to put socialism on trial, challenge it, debate it, rebut it — and convict it. “I don’t want us to stand idly by,” Kudlow said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. “I don’t want to let this stuff fester.” It ...
A $44,000 Surgery Can Cost Just $16,000 Somewhere Else for One Reason: Competition
A hip replacement in Maine can run north of $44,000. Down the coast in Boston, it’s a different story. There, the same procedure costs just more than $16,000, a fraction of the price. Knee surgeries follow the same pattern. They cost up to $13,500 in Maine, but as little as $3,900 ...
Here’s a prescription for mid-sized businesses providing workers with health care
Small businesses and large corporations have been spared some of Obamacare’s most burdensome regulations. Small firms are exempt from the employer mandate requiring them to offer coverage. Large ones don’t have to adhere to the law’s essential health benefits mandates. Mid-sized businesses haven’t been so lucky. These firms, which typically ...
March 18 – Free-Market Solutions to California’s Health Care Challenges
In part 1 of a special 4-part series on how free-market ideas can build new, diverse coalitions in California, PRI’s Sally Pipes, Wayne Winegarden, and Henry Miller discuss how proposals like single-payer health care and new mandates on prescription drugs would hurt innovation and how market-based policies can better address ...
Medicare for All Won’t Result in Better Health Outcomes
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker claims Medicare for All would “save lives.” Vermont’s own Senator Bernie Sanders promises it would end “the disgrace of tens of thousands of Americans dying every year from preventable deaths.” But a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds little evidence to support those assertions. The authors examined ...
Desperately Seeking a Reformer to Head the FDA
Federal regulation affects our lives every day in more ways than we realize. The Food and Drug Administration alone regulates products that account for more than a trillion dollars annually—25 cents of every consumer dollar; and the average cost (including out-of-pocket expenses and opportunity costs) to bring a new drug ...
America’s Citrus Fruits Are Being Decimated By An Incurable Disease — We Need GM Science to Save Them
Farmers in the major U.S. citrus-producing regions—Florida, California, Texas and Arizona, in particular—are facing a plague of epic proportions. Oranges and a range of other citrus fruits are being decimated by an incurable disease, a lethal, bacterial infection known as “citrus greening”—or Huanglongbing. It is spread by a tiny insect, ...
Feds battle opioid abuse with a circular firing squad
By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and Josh Bloom, Ph.D. The ongoing battle to control opioid addiction has not gone well. Many of the government’s efforts have been medically and scientifically flawed and unproductive. Some have even been counterproductive. Public policy is in disarray. A Feb. 1 article in the Journal of ...
Research integrity and why bad science has become such a problem
By S. Stanley Young and Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. Science depends on corroboration — that is, researchers verify others’ results, often making incremental advances as they do so. The nature of science dictates that no research paper is ever considered to be the final word, but increasingly, there are ...
The FDA has problems — Here are the qualities the next commissioner must have to fix them
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the nation’s most ubiquitous regulatory agency. It oversees a vast array of medical and food products that account for 25 cents of every consumer dollar, with a value of over a trillion dollars annually. And the agency has problems. It’s too risk-averse, bureaucratically ...
Americans Who Want Socialism Should Consider Moving to California
Trump adviser and distinguished economist Larry Kudlow wants to put socialism on trial, challenge it, debate it, rebut it — and convict it. “I don’t want us to stand idly by,” Kudlow said at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland. “I don’t want to let this stuff fester.” It ...
