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]
Democrats are warning that once Obamacare is repealed, people with serious illnesses won't get health insurance. President Obama says repeal will mean going "back to discriminating against Americans with pre-existing conditions." That's fake news.
The truth is, every Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act protects people with pre-existing conditions.
At the same time, the GOP proposals will rectify Obamacare's insidious discrimination against healthy people. Obamacare forces the healthy to pay the same premiums as the chronically ill, whose medical costs are 10…