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Hidden 'tort tax' exacts big toll
PRI in the News
By: George Israel
3.30.2007
On April 17, millions of Americans will write a check to the Internal Revenue Service. While they have their checkbooks out, they may as well make out another one for $9,827, payable to personal injury lawyers, who annually cost the nation a staggering $865 billion. That's billion with a "b."
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Editorial: True costs of ‘Jackpot Justice’
PRI in the News
3.30.2007
WASHINGTON - Next time your doctor orders lots of blood tests and MRIs, you will be experiencing a slice of the estimated $124 billion annually in unnecessary costs imposed on American health care providers through malpractice and other liability suits.
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Losing Our Census
PRI in the News
3.29.2007
The government has found how to cut the number of uninsured people by almost 2 million — fix the computer that counts them. But even if they're counted right, they're still being counted wrong.
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Shakedown artists — or defenders of the little guy?
PRI in the News
By: Micah Morrison
3.29.2007
WASHINGTON - Love ’em or loathe ’em, class-action lawyers wield enormous — and controversial — influence in business and politics. Critics charge that class-action lawyers often practice a kind of legal extortion, shaking down large and small businesses with threats of litigation and, more often than not, winning generous settlements without even going to trial.
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Why New Education Report Has California Quaking
Education Op-Ed
By: Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D
3.29.2007
A new education report, the most thorough to date, has made Sacramento the epicenter of California's latest quake. The 1,700-page Getting Down to Facts report concludes what research and common sense have shown for a long time: pouring more money into California's dysfunctional public education system won't improve student performance.
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Study: U.S. legal system eats up $865B
PRI in the News
3.28.2007
SAN FRANCISCO, March 28 (UPI) -- The U.S. legal system imposes a cost of $865 billion a year on the U.S. economy, or $9,800 a family, a San Francisco "free-market" think tank reports.
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Litigation Lottery costs America $865 billion per year,
Press Release
3.27.2007
SAN FRANCISCO — America’s out-of-control legal system imposes a staggering economic cost of over $865 billion every year according to a new scholarly study released today by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI) a free-market think tank based in San Francisco, California.
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No fix for housing crunch
PRI in the News
3.27.2007
California housing is expensive, scarce and getting more so daily. To fix things, the Legislature is considering more government mandates and more tinkering with market forces.
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Tort Tax Hurts Americans Even More Than Previously Thought
PRI in the News
3.27.2007
DES PLAINES, Ill. – A new study has found that with a staggering price tag of over $865 billion per year, America’s tort system significantly impacts the cost of liability insurance, increases the cost of goods and services, lowers our standard of living, and makes it harder for U.S. companies to compete in the global marketplace, according to the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America (PCI).
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The Tort Tax
Business and Economic Op-Ed
By: Lawrence J. McQuillan, Ph.D, Hovannes Abramyan
3.27.2007
Economists have long understood that America's tort system acts as a serious drag on our nation's economy. Although many excellent studies have been conducted, no single work has fully captured the true total costs, both static and dynamic, of excessive litigation.
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Free market analysis of health care reform
PRI in the News
By: Sara Solovitch
3.23.2007
John R. Graham, director of health care studies at San Francisco think tank Pacific Research Institute, views health care reform from the perspective of a free market advocate.
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Why Walter Reed Went Wrong
Health Op-Ed
By: Sally C. Pipes
3.23.2007
THUS far, recriminations, finger-pointing and scalp-mongering are Washington's response to the substandard care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. But in many respects, Walter Reed is a classic example of what's wrong with government-run health care.
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Gore on the Rocks
Environment Op-Ed
By: Steven F. Hayward, Ph.D
3.21.2007
As international celebrity and film star Al Gore prepared to testify about global warming on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, it was already apparent that the hot air may be leaking out of the global-warming balloon.
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A chance to deliver school reform
PRI in the News
3.19.2007
SAN FRANCISCO - The best aspect of the much-anticipated, nonpartisan $3 million California school quality report is how definitively it spotlights the desperate flaws of this state’s teaching system. It will be hard indeed for politicians and school offcials to ignore the evidence showing that no substantive improvement can be made without dramatic top-to-bottom reform.
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Izumi vs. A Hollywood Bimbo
PRI in the News
By: Jennifer Nelson
3.19.2007
My friend Lance Izumi, director of the Pacific Research Institute's California Education Studies, recently was on a locally produced version of "The View" and over the weekend sent me a link to the video.
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Report on California Public School Efficiency and Funding Got Down to Facts, Now Politicians Must Get to Work
Media Advisory
3.16.2007
Key findings on California public school efficiency and funding adequacy were released to the public this week. Sensationalized leaks prior to the release of the report Getting Down to Facts suggested California public school woes would be solved by spending more than$1 trillion. “The report concluded no such thing,” said Vicki Murray, senior fellow in Education Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, a free-market think tank based in California. “It found what research and common-sense have told us for a long time: spending more money on more of the same won’t reverse California’s race to the bottom.”
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What's wrong with public education?
PRI in the News
3.15.2007
Opening half of huge study confirms the obvious dysfunction, but offers no solutions, yet "California schools are in need of sweeping, comprehensive reforms if the state is to raise the quality of education and student achievement."
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California schools receive 'F's from think tank
PRI in the News
By: Melonie Magruder
3.14.2007
A study by an independent institute gives low grades to public schools; study's author says that nonaccountability contributes to a broken system. Local educators and assembly member say underfunding is the problem.
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Does New Top Secret Report Really “Get Down to Facts” on Education?
Education Op-Ed
By: Vicki E. Murray, Ph.D
3.14.2007
Getting Down to Facts, a report billed as the most extensive review to date of California public education, is scheduled for release this week, with results from public-school efficiency on Wednesday and funding adequacy on Thursday. Already there is room for doubt whether the top-secret report does indeed get down to facts or merely recycles familiar political themes.
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80 is the new 65
Technology Op-Ed
3.13.2007
How our expectations of the aging population must change to cope with longer life spans.
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Surprises and Enlightenment at Tech Summit
Technology Op-Ed
3.9.2007
Last week's first annual Tech Policy Summit in San Jose, Calif., turned out smaller than expected, but did feature some big names and key insights into tech issues. The biggest surprise was Google's (Nasdaq: GOOG) apparent flip-flop on the issue of net neutrality.
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S.F. politicos try to break 'backbone'
Health Care op-Ed
By: Diana M. Ernst
3.9.2007
Mayor Gavin Newsom calls the small business community the "backbone of San Francisco," but that community now struggles under three city-imposed burdens: the minimum hourly wage of $9.14, the San Francisco Health Access Program, and most recently, an extended sick-leave law.
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Fat bureaucracy won't trickle down to Californians
PRI in the News
By: Diana M. Ernst
3.8.2007
Legislators in Sacramento are pushing four new laws that would mandate California restaurant chains and grocery stores to reveal nutrition information immediately and ban all trans fats by 2009. Legislators believe they are fighting the obesity epidemic, but they are also expanding a government that is already overweight.
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Valley's wireless learning curve
PRI in the News
By: Sarah Jane Tribble
3.7.2007
What will it take to make Silicon Valley's wireless network work? That's the question weighing on the minds behind the proposed wireless project, which is expected to be one of the largest in the world, spanning 1,500 square miles and covering 2.4 million people.
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'Universal' Health Care Could Bankrupt Taxpayers
Health Care Op-Ed
By: Diana M. Ernst
3.7.2007
Amy Finkelstein writes that "universal" health coverage could offer financial stability to all Americans as Medicare has done for seniors, although it's likely to increase health-care spending drastically ("The Cost of Coverage," editorial page, Feb. 28).
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'Universal' Healthcare could bankrupt taxpayers
Health Care Op-Ed
By: Diana M. Ernst
3.7.2007
Amy Finkelstein writes that "universal" health coverage could offer financial stability to all Americans as Medicare has done for seniors, although it's likely to increase health-care spending drastically ("The Cost of Coverage," editorial page, Feb. 28).
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Safety kills when the FDA does too much
Health Care Op-Ed
By: Sally C. Pipes
3.7.2007
WASHINGTON - Today, it takes a pharmaceutical company about 12 years to 15 years to develop a new drug and see it through the approval process of the Food and Drug Administration. All too often, as these breakthrough medicines slowly wind their way through the FDA’s bureaucratic maze, patients die while waiting for cures.
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Don't blame the uninsured
Heelth Care Op-Ed
By: John R. Graham
3.5.2007
From Massachusetts to California, politicians seem to think they've discovered a groundbreaking solution to the problem of the uninsured: use the law to bully everyone into becoming insured.
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Another free market think tank voices skepticism on muni-broadband
PRI in the News
By: Ryan Paul
3.4.2007
The Pacific Research Institute (PRI), a nonprofit free-market think tank with industry ties, argues against municipal broadband in its latest report (PDF). Titled Wi-Fi Waste: The Disaster of Municipal Communications Networks, the study examines the supposed financial failings of over 50 city-run telecommunications networks.
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California Should Follow Texas in Asbestos Cases
Business and Economic Op-Ed
By: Joe Nixon
3.2.2007
From football to lawmaking, Texans think everything they do is bigger and better. They even boast that their capitol is taller than the one in Washington, D.C. But when it came to fixing their civil-justice system, Texans looked to California for how to do it right.
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