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 election of Barack Obama was supposed to be a penitential act. His ascension to office, we were told, was interpretable as an offer of atonement for a nation whose founding promise of equality and liberty was soiled by the original sin of slavery. As a controlling argument for his candidacy, it was thin gruel. It’s an act of electoral malpractice, after all, to ignore a candidate’s beliefs simply because he scratches the vestigial itch of collective guilt. But after Obama decisively carried the 2008 presidential election, even many conservatives consoled themselves with the…