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]
What does a suffering military veteran have to do to force an unresponsive government to change its ways?
How about self-immolating in front of his VA clinic? Hello, paper-pushers and desk jockeys? Are you there? Would the heat, the smoke and the smell of burning flesh rouse you in the least?
Nope. Apparently, even this horror is not enough to move the inert bureaucrats at the Department of Veterans Affairs — let alone the indifferent tango dancer-in-chief.
While President Obama sashayed in Buenos Aires two weeks ago, proud Navy veteran Charles Richard Ingram III, 51, made his last…