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]
Sometimes it’s really hard to know where to begin. The sheer scope of the meanness, the petty viciousness, of Barack Obama and his minions is astonishing.
So we all have read by now of the park ranger who said his superiors ordered his team to make the government shutdown as painful as possible for the public. We know about the park service going out of its way to spend more money closing down the open-air World War II Memorial on the National Mall than it would spend to leave it open by doing nothing. We know the park service has closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, closed a privately…