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]
When one side in a policy debate begins advocating imprisonment for opponents, it tends to suggest that side is losing on the substantive merits, not winning.
Case in point: the ongoing man-made climate change debate.
Stop us if this sounds familiar, but the United Nations just issued yet another report alleging that anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming threatens the earth and its living populations. The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose name itself seems farcical, warns that rising temperatures will reduce crop yields, displace populations and…