As Senate Finance Committee Convenes on Healthcare Costs, First Do No Harm
As the United States Senate Finance Committee convenes today for a meeting entitled "The Rising Cost of Health Care: Considering Meaningful Solutions for All Americans," the enduring adage of medical care applies: Do no harm.
Specifically, as we've detailed at CFIF, we must especially avoid potentially catastrophic ideas like drug price controls (whether through so-called "Most Favored Nation" (MFN) programs or any other) and violations of patent and intellectual property (IP) protections in which the United States leads the world. Indeed, our more free-market approach explains why America leads the world in lifesaving healthcare innovation, accounting for an astonishing two-thirds of all new drugs introduced to the world each year:
The reasons that MFN schemes would only exacerbate…[more]
Property rights, as most Americans understand, provide the foundation for our free market system.
As the familiar adage goes, you’ll never see someone taking a rental car to the car wash. Without skin in the game, innovation and investment evaporate, and people’s natural right to enjoy the fruits of their labor withers.
What remains less recognized, however, is the importance of intellectual property (IP) – creations of the mind such as patents, copyrights, and trademarks – in explaining America’s unmatched legacy of innovation, prosperity and power. …