Trump's Prescription Drug Pricing Reform Will Have Unintended Consequences
President Trump just signed an executive order that aims to tackle U.S. prescription drug spending.. The order pegs the prices of certain drugs covered by Medicare to the lower prices paid in other developed countries, whose governments impose strict price controls.
Seizing Patents Will Hamper COVID-19 Vaccine Development
It's full speed ahead on the scientific front in the fight against COVID-19. We're on track to have an arsenal of vaccines and medicines for the novel coronavirus within a year.
Fix Our Medical Insurance Dilemma
Give all Americans the option to buy into Medicare. I've paid into Social Security and Medicare my entire life. I'm still paying to be on plan B and supplemental coverage. I also pay for prescription insurance. I often feel like a coffee coupon from McDonald's would pay for about as much medicine as my prescription card pays.
Pandemic Hasn't Broken the Employer Health Insurance System
Over 55 million Americans have filed for unemployment since COVID-19 struck. But for the most part, they haven't lost their health insurance. An astounding 98 percent of workers who had employer-sponsored health benefits before the pandemic are still enrolled in workplace plans, according to a July report.
With New Drug Pricing Order, Trump Flirts with Socialism
President Trump's recent executive order on drug prices gets almost everything right -- except the solution.
Executive Order for Price Controls Will Harm Innovation and Patients
President Trump just signed a new executive order to reform our healthcare system. While his desire to lower costs for patients is appropriate, the proposed changes would do more harm than good.
Where Has the Truth Gone?
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Martin Luther King, Jr. and America’s "Promissory Note"
Each January, we honor Martin Luther King, Jr. for his leadership in combating racial segregation and securing civil rights for African Americans. However, critics lately have charged that King’s legacy has been “whitewashed,” or remembered selectively. A 2019 Guardian editorial laments that Americans have “Disneyfied” the reformer, saying that we recall his earlier, comforting successes while overlooking his later frustrations and political radicalism. Psychologizing the critique, a 2020 NBC News opinion piece decries that King’s memory is abused for the purpose of cultivating “complacency” and a sense of “absolution.”
Minimum Wage, Maximum Discrimination
Since the days of Adam Smith, economists have sought a set of social institutions which permit “neither dominion, nor discrimination,” to use Nobel Prize-winning economist James Buchanan’s phrase. In this, economists are joined by all people of goodwill—including those in the Biden administration, which has enshrined equity and inclusion as cornerstones of how they’ll govern.
Don't Put Community Cancer Care Centers Out of Business
Ruth is a 67-year-old woman living with metastatic lung cancer. She receives care at a treatment center near her home in rural southern Illinois. There are larger hospitals over an hour away in St. Louis, but she doesn't have the time or financial resources to travel there as often as she would need to.
From the Dawn of the American Twilight
Fifty years ago this spring, my wife and I, both Air Force intelligence officers, returned to Udorn Air Base, Thailand from an “in-country rest & recuperation” trip to Chaing Mai. That night I worked the mid-shift in the intel shop at headquarters 7/13th Air Force. It fell to me to prepare and deliver the morning intelligence briefing to the major general who thought he ran air operations in Northern Laos; a delusion since that war was run by the U.S. Department of State and the CIA with Air Force support.
Outside the Lines: American Corporations and Society
During a heated 1990 U.S. Senate race in North Carolina between the Republican incumbent Jesse Helms and Democratic challenger Harvey Gantt, basketball superstar and North Carolina native Michael Jordan was asked to endorse Gantt’s candidacy.
God, Joe Biden, and the National Day of Prayer
President Joe Biden’s omission of the word God from his National Day of Prayer proclamation last week has evoked a firestorm of protest. Christian Broadcasting Network commentator David Brody, evangelist Franklin Graham, Catholic League president Bill Donohue, Fox News, and other politically conservative media outlets all criticized Biden’s failure to mention God.
Government-Funded Labs Don't Invent New Drugs
House Democrats just introduced a bill designed to lower prescription drug prices. It doesn't. But wait, it gets worse.
The Lower Drug Costs Now Act, or H.R. 3, is a reprise of a 2019 bill that passed the House but failed to gain support in the Senate.
Pandemic Proves Value of Homecare
Doctors, nurses, and the scientists who created COVID-19 vaccines have all emerged as heroes during the pandemic. But there's another, underappreciated group that's been crucial to the country's pandemic response -- those who provide home-based medical equipment, services, and care.
