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]
The good news for Jeb Bush is that he’s the perfect candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. The bad news is that he’s the perfect candidate in the year 2000.
That’s the counterfactual scenario that most Bush-watchers have spun over the years. Had Jeb won the 1994 race in which he first pursued Florida’s governorship, the theory goes, it would have been him rather than his older brother who became the GOP’s standard-bearer in 2000. Instead, Jeb narrowly lost the ’94 race to Democrat Lawton Chiles, George W. won his contest in Texas in the same year…