Wait a bit … it’s not what you think. This is actually about free-market health care and how Andrew Sullivan is, in many ways, a poster child for our “money-driven” medical system.
Although a confirmed Obot who nurses a morbid antipathy for Sarah Palin (see this post about Levi Johnston), he has also written eloquently about the virtues of U.S. health care:
I was told in 1993 that […]
Health Care BS
Prescription Drug BS —
Category Archives: Prescription Drug BS
WHY IS ANDREW SULLIVAN ALIVE?
FDA APPROVES DESPONDEX
Finally, a cure. Think of all the Monday mornings that will be a little easier to endure now that there is help for these people:
[HT GruntDoc]
DEMS SPEND WILDLY, WON’T PAY FOR MEDS
I have written before about the deplorable NHS policy of restricting access to life-saving medications. Anyone doubting that the “reformers” who now control D.C. have the same thing in mind for us should read this WSJ piece:
In Britain, a government agency evaluates new medical products for their “cost effectiveness” before citizens can get access to them … […]
U.S. HEALTH SPENDING SLOWS … WHY?
One of the pretexts that single-payer advocates use to justify their push for government-run health care is cost. This is presumably why they have been so quiet about recent reports showing that health care inflation is slowing. As the Health Affairs Blog puts it:
National health care spending grew at its lowest rate in nearly a decade in 2007.
And what […]
MCCAIN, OBAMA AND DRUG REIMPORTATION
As I have pointed out before, the one health care position John McCain and Barack Obama have in common is their wrong-headed support of prescription drug reimportation. It appears, however, that both candidates may be waking up:
Barack Obama and John McCain are reviewing their support for allowing individuals to import cheaper prescription drugs in light of tainted medicines and […]
FIVE HEALTH CARE MYTHS
The advocates of government-run health care supplement their thin repertoire of legitimate arguments with a series of canards that they hope will be accepted as facts. Sally Pipes debunks five of these myths in The Washington Times:
I. 47 million Americans do not have insurance.
The [Census] Bureau counts anyone who went without insurance for any part of […]
THE FREE MARKET TRIUMPHS YET AGAIN
The WSJ Health Blog notes that Wal-Mart has saved its customers more than $1 billion with its $4 generics program:
Wal-Mart’s doing a bit of chest thumping this morning, claiming that its $4 generics program has saved consumers $1 billion — $1,032,573,012.61 as of March 10, to be precise.
These savings were brought about not by government cost […]
OBAMA AND MCCAIN ON DRUGS
Yesterday, I noted that Barack Obama and John McCain are both right on health insurance mandates. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about their positions on drug reimportation. Both are for it—which means they are for importing the price controls of Canada and other countries.
As I discuss here, drug reimportation would stifle innovation while producing insignificant reductions in pharmaceutical spending. […]
DRUG IMPORTATION = LESS INNOVATION
Jason Shafrin at Healthcare Economist links to a study that attempts to quantify the relationship between drug importation and pharmaceutical innovation. The study’s author, Frank R. Lichtenberg, concludes that importation would bring about short term price reductions but that innovation would suffer:
In the long run, a 10% decline in drug prices would … be likely to cause at least […]
McCain on Drugs
I have been fearful that John McCain’s occasional use of phrases like “safe importation of drugs” meant that he was eventually going to endorse the re-importing of pharmaceuticals from Canada. Alas, AP has confirmed my fears:
Republican presidential contender John McCain on Saturday said he wants to again allow the importation of prescription drugs from Canada […]
