 | Comparative Effectiveness Reviews: Quantitative Analysis of Research and Development Investment Effects
By Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
July 2011 A new research study released by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based free-market think tank, examines an expanded quasi-federal comparative effectiveness review (CER) process and the negative effects on private-sector investment in research and development of new and improved medical technologies. |
 | Bust or Bailout? The Future of Private Health Plans Under ObamaCare
By John R. Graham
July 2011 A new research study released by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based free-market think tank, shows how ObamaCare threatens the solvency of private health plans, which will significantly reduce consumer choice and increase costs. The ultimate result will likely be either a massive taxpayer bailout of private health plans or continued momentum toward a single-payer government-monopoly system. |
 | Medicare Auctions for Durable Medical Equipment: Price Suppression and Research and Development Investment
By Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
June 2011 A new research study released by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a California-based free-market think tank, reviews the auction design process currently established by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for medical devices and equipment. |
 | Medi-Cal Long-Term Care: Safety Net or Hammock?
By Stephen Moses
January 2011 Easy access to Medi-Cal-financed long-term care (LTC) has caused many Californians to put off long-term care planning and rely on public assistance. The taxpayer price tag for Medi-Cal Long-Term Care was $12.5 billion in 2008 and will likely increase with the growing population of age-80-plus citizens in the state. |
 | Leviathan's Drug Problem: Increasing Patients' Choices Through International Competition in Pharmaceutical Regulation
By John R. Graham
July 2010 This study concludes that allowing American patients to access medicines that have already been approved in Europe would increase regulatory competition, enable more patient choice, and potentially save the lives of those suffering life-threatening illnesses who currently have no legal options for treatment. |
 | Taxing Health Insurance: How Much Do States Earn?
PRI Study
By: John R. Graham
3.17.2010
This publication presents a first-of-its-kind report on the potential cost of increased federal control of health insurance. This report, written by John R. Graham, PRI director of Health Care Studies, provides state-by-state estimates of revenues from premium taxes on health-insurance policies.
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| Entrepreneurs’ Coverage: An Alternative Health Policy Reform
PRI Study
By: Benjamin Zycher, Ph.D
1.20.2010
This study examines the prospective implications of a national public policy allowing individuals, families, and smaller groups to purchase an “entrepreneurs” coverage policy free of the benefit mandates imposed by state laws. |
 | Medicare Advantage or Medicare Monopoly: Protecting Seniors’ Choices and Taxpayers’ Wallets in the Federal Government’s Largest Entitlement Program
PRI Study
By: John R. Graham
12.17.2009
This report examines the costs and benefits of Medicare Advantage, which allows consumers to get their benefits through private insurance plans. Under the Senate Health Care bill, the Medicare Advantage program, would be cut by about $118 billion. |
 | U.S. Index of Health Ownership: 3rd Edition
PRI Publication
By: John R. Graham
7.21.2009
Americans continue to lack the basic freedom to make their own health care decisions according to this third edition of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, an annual report by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). The Index measures the degree to which individuals, be they patients, health professionals, entrepreneurs, or taxpayers, “own” the health care in their states. |
 | Leviathan’s Drug Problem: Federal Monopoly of Pharmaceutical Regulation and its Deadly Cost
PRI Publication
By: John R. Graham
3.27.2009
In recent years, the contamination of American staples such as spinach, tomatoes, and peanut butter has made news headlines nationwide and has now captured the attention of President Obama. |
 | Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen's Guide
By: Sally C. Pipes
10.21.2008
With this book, Sally Pipes gives us an invaluable tool for navigating the health care debate. But she doesn’t simply debunk ten popular myths. She puts lasting insights down on the table for whenever citizens and policymakers must deal with the seductive, but dangerous, argument that only government is able to provide essential economic goods and services to its people. |
 | Presidential Prescriptions: Diagnosing the Candidates’ Health Reforms
PRI Study
By: John R. Graham
10.07.2008
The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) released a voters’ guide to the health policies proposed by presidential candidates Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama.
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 | 2008 U.S. Index of Health Ownership
PRI Publication
By: John R. Graham
8.19.2008
San Francisco-Americans lack the basic freedom to make their own health care decisions according to the second edition of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, an annual report by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). The Index measures the degree to which individuals, be they patients, health professionals, entrepreneurs, or taxpayers, "own" the health care in their states. Special Features Page |
 | From Heart Transplants to Hairpieces: The Questionable Benefits of State Benefit Mandates for Health Insurance
By: John R. Graham
7.01.2008 This paper reviews 28 original actuarial and econometric articles that attempt to estimate the cost of benefit mandates, as well as others that summarize the literature on mandates during the last two decades of their development. The results vary widely. No scholar has replicated the experiments of his colleagues, thereby rendering scientific conclusions impossible. The hardy few who have attempted to measure the costs use different (often uncertain) data sources, and run them through different models, often of dizzying complexity.
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 | California Health Care Deforminator: Model ABX1 1
Healthy California Series
By: John R. Graham
1.23.2008 Californians entered 2007 hopeful that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders would collaborate to find real solutions to overcome the “root causes” of rapidly increasing health costs, the growing number of uninsured, and the rise in small businesses increasingly unable to provide health benefits. Instead, they got a proposed tax increase.
Read more |
 | U.S. Index of Health Ownership
By John R. Graham
June 2007 Today, almost half of the country’s health-care spending is in the hands of the government, instead of patients themselves. The other half is governed by a bewildering morass of regulations on doctors, insurance companies, and us as patients that nobody can hope to understand. The result: as much as one third-of our health-care spending is wasted. Politicians created this system—the most expensive in the world—and they continue to add more and more layers of government control, usually attempting to fix problems that they created in the first place. Special Features Page |
 | Curing California Health Care: 5 Steps to Universal Choice in 2007
By: Diana M. Ernst, John R. Graham
January 2007 Governor Schwarzenegger will start his second term with California health reform as his top priority. Hopefully, the Governor will take a fresh turn towards universal choice in health care, which requires breaking free from the inflexible and expensive status quo but does not impose more government power. So far, his policy approach remains unclear. |
 | Questionable Cure for a Questionable Crisis | Factsheet
By: Sally C. Pipes
November 2006 Massachusetts made history in April, 2006, when it passed a law requiring residents to purchase health insurance or face fines beginning in July 2007. The plan was hailed as an innovative way to achieve universal health insurance coverage. It places responsibility on the individual to purchase health insurance, asks employers to subsidize insurance or pay a fee, and puts the government in charge of brokering plans that it promises will be affordable. Taxpayers will provide generous subsidies for those with low incomes. |
 | CA Election 2006: Proposition 86 Voter Pamphlet
Keep Tobacco Money Out of Our Hospitals | Factsheet
October 2006
California hospitals are seduced by the New Tobacco Industry. This industry makes nothing that it sells to those who voluntarily buy. Instead, it feeds off a river of cash, a Leviathan wreathed in smoke rising from the billions
of dollars that the government extracts from the Old Tobacco Industry and its customers every year.
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 | What States Can Do to Reform Health Care: A Free Market Primer
By: John R. Graham, James R. Copland, Roy Cordato, Nina Owcharenko, Brett J. Skinner, Shirley V. Svorny, J.P. Wieske
July 2006
Free-market advocates recognize that the core weakness of American health care lies in government’s intrusion: it significantly weakens the incentives necessary to ensure that health providers put the needs of patients first. Americans experience health systems that are burdened by more rules and regulations every year. |
 | Deadly Solution: SB-840 and the Government Takeover of California Health Care
By: John R. Graham
June 2006
Last year (2005), State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) introduced SB-840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act, which the State Senate has passed and now awaits debate in the Assembly, having passed the Assembly Health Committee in summer 2005. SB-840 imposes a Canadian-style government healthcare monopoly in California. This briefing paper demonstrates the negative consequences of such a system, and advances consumer-directed health care as an alternative. SB-840 is supported analytically by a report from the Lewin Group, a consulting firm in Virginia. |
 | The High Cost of Low-Priced Drug to California
By Philip J. Romero
January 2006
With the defeat of two competing prescription drug discount proposals in the November 8, 2005 special election, politicians and interest groups who want to lower drug prices are likely to revisit a notion that has already been pursued unsuccessfully by California state legislators: the “parallel trade” of medicines from Canada and other countries with lower-priced prescription drugs. This study estimates the benefits to Californian patients of acquiring lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada through “parallel trade”, as well as the potential costs to California-based companies and the resulting impact on the California economy. |
 | California’s Uninsured: Crisis, Conundrum or Chronic Condition?
By John R. Graham
January 2006
The problem of Californians without health insurance is not as awful as generally portrayed. Most of the discussion revolves around the often unstated assumption that Californians should enjoy health “coverage” that pays for all or most of their health expenditures. However, laws and regulations that force health insurers to provide policies on this basis ensure that many Californians will choose not to buy them. Findings about Californians and their health insurance are complicated, sometimes confusing, and often contradictory. |
 | Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Research and Development Investment Under a Patent-Based Access and Benefit Sharing Regime
Dr. Benjamin Zycher
May 2005
The forthcoming Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) provisions of the Convention on Biodiversity carry significant potential implications for the future of biotechnological and pharmaceutical research and development investment, and thus for the evolution of preventative and therapeutic medicine, that is, for the future alleviation of human suffering. If implemented in a system of contractual arrangements, ABS would secure for the owners of flora, fauna, and traditional knowledge clearer and more certain ownership of intellectual and physical property without the severe valuation and other biases inherent in a patent-based system. A patent-based ABS system on the other hand would be equivalent analytically to a long-run tax on biotechnological and pharmaceutical research and development investment. Accordingly, it would have the effect of reducing such investment and thus the worldwide biotechnological and pharmaceutical capital stock over time. |
