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]
Good policy is good politics.
While policy wonkishness rarely wins major elections, it is true that voters in tough times sometimes do want a sense, backed by at least some details, of how a candidate proposes to change things. For whatever reason, Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney has gone a bit light on the policy front in most of his speeches. If one looks at his web site, however, one gets a sense of a proposed cornucopia of intelligent policy reforms, especially in the area of health care.
If Romney succeeds in effecting a repeal of ObamaCare, for instance, he would replace it…