Any mandatory and comprehensive plan will finish off quality medicine in this country–because it will finish off the medical profession. It will deliver doctors bound hands and feet to the mercies of the bureaucracy. The only hope–for the doctors, for their patients, for all of us–is for the doctors to assert a moral principle. I mean: to assert their own personal individual rights–their real rights in this issue–their right to their lives, their liberty, their property, their pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence applies to the medical profession too. We must reject the idea that doctors are slaves destined to serve others at the behest of the state. – AYN RAND
Americans of all political parties need to give close attention to health care issues in this election year. Regardless of how they intend to vote, they need to understand that health care is the primary cause of increased government spending. It confronts Americans...
At their National Convention, Republicans will complain of John Kerry’s habit of complicating complex issues with even more complex and mutually exclusive solutions. On the issue of health care, however, the Democratic Platform has clear and straight-forward...
Problems with our health care system are leading some to fall prey to proposals calling for a nationalized single-payer health care system like Canada’s or Britain’s. There are a few things that we might take into consideration before falling for these...
Americans who care about their health care need to pay close attention in an election year to politicians of all parties who seem bent on becoming much more involved in the details of what health care will be allowed and at what cost. Neither the Democratic nor...
Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark to explore the vast spaces of North America from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean. Jefferson understood the enormous challenges for the growth of knowledge and liberty on a continental scale. These were the...
When George W. Bush further socializes medical care, he not only harms patients; he also harms the case for capitalism.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now seeking to expand its considerable powers into the regulation of vitamins and nutritional supplements. The FDA has evidently discovered that Americans, after centuries of experience doing so, cannot now be counted on to...
Republicans think they are so clever, having rammed through a massive expansion of the welfare state by giving drug benefits to the elderly. They co-opted the AARP — long considered to be in the pocket of the Democrats — and left the Democrats with no real...
After battling for months over two allegedly opposite versions of the bill to add prescription drug coverage to Medicare, members of the House and Senate announced Saturday they had reached an agreement. House Republicans managed to include in the bill a provision to...
Adding prescription drug coverage to Medicare, as Congress is poised to do, is merely more socialism — it will neither help seniors nor is its passage likely to gain their votes.
The Medicare II bill (my name for it) that Congress is about to pass is an unmitigated disaster. The bill contains provisions for the largest expansion of socialized health care in this nation’s history. It essentially nationalizes prescription drugs for the...
At a cost of $400 billion over 10 years, Congressional Republicans have agreed in Conference Committee–with the enthusiastic encouragement of a Republican President–to the greatest expansion of government in two generations. This new Medicare program can...
It is always fascinating to see elementary economics make front-page news. It was front-page news in the Wall Street Journal of November 12th that there are long waiting times for seeing medical specialists in Canada and in other countries with government-controlled...
From time to time, Congress passes, and the President signs a bill, that forever changes every American’s life. The Medicare prescription drug coverage bill — which President Bush has vowed to sign — is such an event; if passed, this expansion of...
It is insulting enough when the government celebrates your death by taxing away your wealth or your business. Much more damaging are the taxes on the money you need to stay alive. Medicare legislation now pending before a conference committee in Washington would...
Last Thursday night, Congress approved President Bush’s expansion of Medicare by one vote. Once Bush signs the bill, every American over age 65 will lose the freedom to choose, pay for and control drug treatments. The proposal, set to start in three years, is a...
This week, at President Bush’s urging, the GOP-controlled Congress is likely to approve a bill that severely restricts seniors’ freedom of choice in health care. When Congress passes the Medicare bill — which Bush has promised to sign — every...
The FDA has okayed Prozac for kids 8-years-old and up. While some physicians have prescribed to kids for years, this puts the stamp of approval on a practice that is still highly controversial due to a lack of studies. The drug’s maker, Eli Lilly, has agreed to...
In the January 6th, 2003 Wall Street Journal editorial it is stated: “Adding a drug benefit [to Medicare] makes sense, but only if it is added as part of reform that introduces market incentives and competition to Medicare.” Wrong. Adding a drug benefit to...
The one monumental fact that is being ignored in all the political schemes to bring down the cost of pharmaceutical drugs is that it costs hundreds of millions of dollars to develop one successful new medicine. No matter how cleverly the politicians try to shift those...
Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories has developed an injectable antibiotic called Tigecycline. It can be used to treat resistant pathogens — bacteria that are immune to standard antibiotics. However, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has changed the rules for...
The AIDS activists have based their campaign on a socialist agenda that is focused on bashing the drugs industry.
Simple is usually better, right? So it’s not surprising to hear some members of Congress agreeing with syndicated columnist Molly Ivins on how to reduce the number of Americans without health insurance. “The answer is universal health insurance, a...
The Food and Drug Administration is currently spending its resources hunting the American Red Cross, a charitable non-profit organization that is responsible for many health advancements in America, by attempting to find ways in which the Red Cross has violated the...
Republicans have never been big fans of reforming the health insurance system, nor have many of them ever taken the time to learn much about it. Of course, that won’t be a surprise to anyone who has watched Republicans pass one bad piece of health care...
As a health care provider, here is my proposal for a patient bill of rights: 1. The right to enter voluntary, contractual relationships with doctors — without paternalistic interference on the part of federal and state governments. For example: laws mandating...
Mandates have a profound effect on medical practice. The relationship of patient and physician is shattered: in administering the vaccine, the physician is serving as the agent of the state.
The complex system for Medicare reimbursement for physicians is based on over 7,000 medical treatment codes. You know we’re in big trouble in medicine today when there’s a code not only for flatulence, but one for the guy standing downwind as well....
What we have in the United States today, in health care and other fields as well, is government largely running the show while we all pretend that it’s capitalism causing the problems.
Al Gore promised to provide prescription drugs “coverage for all” American senior citizens if elected president. Democrats applauded, and Republicans timidly committed to a plan that makes “coverage … available for all seniors.” What would...
Al Gore promised to provide prescription drugs “coverage for all” American senior citizens if elected president. Republicans, afraid of not jumping on the bandwagon and missing out on the next elections, joined the Democrats, and committed to a plan that...
Last December [1999], the National Academy of Sciences has called for the establishment of a federal “Center for Patient Safety,” operating under the auspices of Public Health Service at a projected annual cost of $100 million. The...
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