Richard E. Ralston

Many politicians now tell us that health care in America is “broken.” The best initial response to that is to ask yourself whether you think that your own health care is broken. And if it is, do you want to turn your decisions about your own health over to...

Americans did not invent democracy. What America rightly did, for the first time in history, was institutionalize the concept of limited government–based not on majority rule, but on individual rights. Sadly, this foundation is not properly recognized and is...

The status quo in American health care is indefensible–an expensive regulatory and bureaucratic mess. What that calls for, however, is not more layers of regulation and complicated mandates. Nor should government take over health care completely and run it as...

Five years ago, an expert for the British government prepared a report to recommend a plan for Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). The report was recently released to assess what has happened since. Spending has grown by 50 percent in real terms, with an...

Much of the current debate about health care is between those who want the government to wipe all insurance companies out of existence and those who instead want the government to force everyone to buy regulated private insurance. Both sides ignore the fundamental...

One of the great scandals of our age is the fact that America spends more on food than any other nation. Many political leaders are now calling for urgent reform to bring spending on food under control. Even worse, while the result of this uncontrolled spending...

When talking about health insurance, “mandatory” is an increasingly popular term among politicians of both major parties, including presidential candidates. What do they really mean by it? Put simply, being uninsured would no longer be a misfortune or a...

Michael Moore’s Sicko has had a respectable box office performance for a documentary film. But it has drawn only a small fraction of the audience that turned out for his previous film, Fahrenheit 9/11. Sicko opened in a relatively small number of theaters, with...

Michael Moore’s comedy-drama Sicko presented a great deal of misinformation–too much to summarize in a short column. Besides, if anyone in the audience really believed that all Cubans receive superb health care when Mr. Moore’s cameras are not...

Open Public Hearing; Endocrinologic and Metabolic Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committees to the Food and Drug Administration; Gaithersburg, Maryland “Good Afternoon. I am Richard Ralston, Executive Director of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine....

The U.S. government now pays for and controls half of the health care in America. That is up from less than 10 percent forty years ago. Government spending on health care has increased at a rapid rate as its share of health care has increased. Yet those who complain...

Ultimately all health care is paid for by business activity. Business provides the wages, the return on investment, the insurance, the taxes that pay directly for health care, and the insurance and taxes that fund government programs. When the government manages to...

For years the advocates of a total takeover of health care by the government have pointed to the Veterans Administration as the model of efficient and caring health care by our government. It provides an ideal model, they said, for all health care. They must have...

While Governor Schwarzenegger and California legislators are busy putting forward proposals to socialize health care, one element is profoundly missing: none of these politicians know or care what physicians think of the proposals. It should have occurred to them that...

Advocates of medical socialism want to reduce the profits of pharmaceutical firms and put health insurance companies out of business completely. But who profits from profits–and exactly who profits when they are destroyed? Critics point to supposedly lower...

California is a huge state with a huge population, a huge economy and a huge, rapidly growing government. Any attempt by that government to address health care issues draws the aggressive lobbying attention of a huge number of corporate, union, religious and political...

It is unlikely that any significant improvements in health care policy will come out of the U.S. Congress in the next two years. However, major changes might develop at the state level–especially in California–for two reasons. First, as the most populous...

When the United States of America got its start, the general idea was that individuals should be left free to carve out their own lives free of government interference, based on the principles of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Gradually...

Since the Federal Food and Drug Act came into law in 1906, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has had a century to develop their methodology for insuring drug safety. After expanding to an annual budget of $1.5 billion and a staff of 10,000, they continue to seek...

It is precisely because our health care is so important to each of us that we need to be especially careful to preserve and protect the rights of physicians and other health care providers.

In response to the National Security Agency’s acquisition of private telephone call databases, a lot of politicians — even those who were given frequent briefings about the program for more than four years — claim to be deeply shocked about this...

When you file your tax return on April 15, know that even more of your taxes will be eaten up by government spending on health care. You should also ask why so much of the income you have left is spent on health care and health insurance. The two questions are...

“Universal Health Care” is the increasing drumbeat of advocates who want Americans to place all responsibility for their health care in the hands of government. They say health care needs require us to put aside such considerations as personal choice and...