It has been 20 years since Viagra was introduced, and Pfizer is still searching for another drug with as much earning power as the revolutionary blue erection pill. If anything, the chances for another miracle drug may be waning as the pharmaceutical giant constrains its research and development budget amid broader cost-cutting efforts.
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by Dan Mitchell I routinely grouse about the heavy economic cost of red tape. I’ve also highlighted agencies (such as the EEOC) that seem especially prone to senseless regulations. And I’ve explained why private regulation actually is a very effective way of promoting health and safety. Today, let’s get specific and look at the Food and Drug Administration. This bureaucracy ostensibly is supposed to protect us by making sure drugs and medical devices are safe and effective before getting approval, which seems like it might be a reasonable role for government. But the FDA routinely does really foolish things that undermine public health. The likely reason is that the bureaucracy has a bad incentive structure. As Professor Alex Tabarrok has explained. …the FDA has an incentive to delay the introduction of new drugs because approving a bad drug (Type I error) has more severe consequences for the FDA than does failing to approve a good drug (Type II error). In the former case at least some victims are identifiable and the New York Times writes stories about them and how they died because the FDA failed. In the latter case, when the FDA fails to approve a good drug, people die but the bodies are buried in an invisible…
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Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion program and subsidies have made major health insurance companies extremely profitable, according to a White House economic report released Wednesday morning. The White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) report that insurers’ financial health, a measure the group says is reflected in their stock prices, improved markedly after Obamacare took full effect Jan.…
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A new global threat dubbed “Disease X” has been added to the World Health Organization’s (WHO) list of maladies that could cause a worldwide epidemic-even though it doesn’t actually exist yet. The mysterious malady is meant to represent a “known unknown” that could be created by biological mutation in the future, WHO said on its website.
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Advocates of the “Right to Try” movement hope a State of the Union shoutout by President Donald Trump this will build momentum for legislation to let dying patents bypass government red tape to use experimental drugs in the U.S. Naomi Lopez Bauman, director of health care policy at the libertarian Goldwater Institute, said the president’s endorsement during his Tuesday address to the nation will help.
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MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhl blamed Republicans Friday for allowing a federal children’s health program to expire, repeating a claim that has reverberated across the Internet and national media in recent days. The Washington Post Fact Checker earlier this week for making a similar claim.
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Type 2 diabetes can be reversed with weight loss, according to new findings by researchers in the U.K., challenging conventional wisdom that the acquired disorder requires lifelong management. Almost half of the 306 participants recruited went into remission, which varied with the amount of weight loss, but the highest rates of remission being achieved in the group that lost the most weight.
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Premiums for Obamacare’s “benchmark” plans will rise by 37 percent and choices will dwindle in 2018, with eight full states having just one insurer to choose from, the Trump administration said Monday in a report detailing the federal marketplace known as HealthCare.gov. However, the average tax credit that many consumers use to afford coverage will rise…
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After several feuds with both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, President Trump said the fighting can be helpful in getting things done. “Sometimes it helps, to be honest with you,” Mr. Trump said in an interview on Fox Business that aired Monday. “Sometimes it gets people to do what they’re supposed to be doing, and that’s the…
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by Jeffery A. Tucker It’s not just that Obamacare is financially unsustainable. More seriously, it is intellectually unsustainable, even though this truth has been slow to emerge. This has come to an end with President Trump’s executive order. What does it do? It cuts subsidies to failing providers, yes. It also redefines the meaning of “short term” policies from one year to 90 days. But more importantly–and this is what has the pundit class in total meltdown–it liberalizes the rules for providers to serve health-coverage consumers. In the words of USA Today: the executive order permits a greater range of choice “by allowing more consumers to buy health insurance through association health plans across state lines.” The key word here is “allowing” – not forcing, not compelling, not coercing. Allowing. Why would this be a problem? Because allowing choice defeats the core feature of Obamacare, which is about forcing risk pools to exist that the market would otherwise never have chosen. If you were to summarize the change in a phrase it is this: it allows more freedom. The tenor of the critics’ comments on this move is that it is some sort of despotic act. But let’s be…
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Despite another failed attempt to deliver on a seven-year Republican promise to repeal the nation’s health care law, U.S. President Donald Trump vowed Wednesday to continue to pursue a repeal, insisting Senate Republicans have enough votes that would be cast at a later time. On Twitter, Trump stressed that the numbers exist, “with one Yes vote…
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One of the most enduring lessons from the Obamacare fiasco, is that to win a political battle it is best to keep the message simple. If there are too many moving parts to a plan, if Americans don’t understand what the politicians are doing, or if there are parts of a bill they don’t like, it…
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The Kaiser Family Foundation, a prominent health care think tank, styles itself as a non-partisan research organization, yet the majority of its board, including Obamacare architect Kathleen Sebelius, donate to Democratic candidates and causes. The highly-cited Kaiser organization (it is not connected to insurance company Kaiser Permanente) is referred to as non-partisan in its research on…
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A couple of weeks ago, there was a protest in front of Senator Lamar Alexander’s Nashville home. The group that protested is called, “Moral Movement Tennessee.” A number of years ago, the left decided they could make mileage by calling themselves, “moral.” Conservatives have not seriously challenged the left on this. And with the help of the enemy media, the left has wrapped themselves in this cloak of, “morality.” As with all liberals, they have morality in name only. “Moral Movement Tennessee” has an agenda that reads just like the various bat guano crazy Democrat groups. They want single payer healthcare, they want massive tax increases, increase voter fraud and pretty much destroy Tennessee as a favorable business environment. Every Western morality teaches that theft is wrong, yet this is exactly these liberals want to do. Liberals are notoriously cheap. They want everything for free and hate to give to charity. These same liberals who would lecture real Americans about “morality” want to take from others by force. This is called taxation and the Libertarians are on to something when they tell us taxation is theft. Charity is a part of morality. But forced charity is not moral. It…
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Consumers in at least two states face the prospect of double-digit increases in health insurance rates next year, as insurers attempt to price premiums amid uncertainty, including from Congress and President Donald Trump on the fate of Obamacare. Also driving rate increases is the fact that the millions of Americans enrolled on Obamacare’s exchanges are sicker…
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