Health Care
California
Unbalanced Medical Billing in California
Imagine if you bought an airline ticket to fly from San Francisco to Chicago and, after the flight, you received another, extra, bill from the co-pilot for what he claims is a fair price for his services flying the plane. He is unsatisfied with the airline’s pay, and would like ...
Commentary
Thailand’s misuse of ‘compulsory licensing’ allowed corrupt officials to steal millions
When it comes to public health, Thailand’s former government leaders would like the world to think that they’re a collection of 21st-century Robin Hoods. Last year, the unelected military-backed government gave Thailand’s state-run pharmaceutical firm, the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO), permission to manufacture generic versions of drugs that fight heart ...
Commentary
More Scrutiny for CIRM and Big-Government Health Care
State Senator Sheila Kuehl, California’s leading partisan of government monopoly health care, has assumed the role of consumer watchdog. Her new measure, SB 1565, “Stem Cell Research – Public Accountability and Access,” targets problems with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Some may wonder if the senator should be ...
Business & Economics
Impact – March 2008
PRI Ideas in Action – March 2008 Policy Update and Monthly Impact Report PRI continues to impact public policy in California, the nation, and abroad. Click below to view PRI’s recent contributions.
Commentary
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Union Power Trumps Patient Rights
Way back last August, I wrote about the tragic closure of Los Angeles’ Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor hospital, the County’s safety-net hospital for LA’s troubled Watts neighborhood. After 35 years of government mismanagement, the death of a woman abandoned on the ER floor for three quarters of an hour was ...
Business & Economics
Alaska’s Tort Gold Rush Stalls: Eli Lilly Shakedown Stumbles
Back in 2006, Alaska’s Attorney-General (like many others) decided he could mine some gold from a successful drug company: in this case, Eli Lilly & Co. Zyprexa, a successful psychiatric drug from Lilly, has also been associated with the side effect of obesity. Alaska alleged that Lilly was slow to ...
Health Care
Ranking Health Care in the States: Promises and Pitfalls
As the scribbler of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only piece of health policy research that ranks states’ laws and regulations according to the principles of free markets and individual choice, I always look forward to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s State Snapshots, which derive from ...
Commentary
Los Angeles Times Health Care Whiplash!
Reading the Los Angeles Times, you might think there are two different Los Angeles, in two parallel universes. On the one hand, Karl Mannheim and Jamie Court criticize Hillary Clinton’s and Barrack Obama’s proposals for mandatory, private, health insurance by correctly asserting that that the Constitution does not give lawmakers ...
California
A Strange Way to Help Patients: California Nurses Association Strikes Again!
I suppose if I were a patient at one of Sutter Health’s ten hospitals in Northern California, now at the mid-point of a ten-day long nursing strike, I might find some cold comfort in the California Nurses Association’s claim that this walk-out by 4,000 RNs is a “dramatic stand for ...
Commentary
Convenient Clinics: Becoming Part of the Problem?
I hate to write this, but there are increasing signs that one of the most significant disruptive forces in American health care today is slowly being sucked into the same old way of doing business. I speak of the convenient clinics. I’m not saying the news is all bad. The ...
Unbalanced Medical Billing in California
Imagine if you bought an airline ticket to fly from San Francisco to Chicago and, after the flight, you received another, extra, bill from the co-pilot for what he claims is a fair price for his services flying the plane. He is unsatisfied with the airline’s pay, and would like ...
Thailand’s misuse of ‘compulsory licensing’ allowed corrupt officials to steal millions
When it comes to public health, Thailand’s former government leaders would like the world to think that they’re a collection of 21st-century Robin Hoods. Last year, the unelected military-backed government gave Thailand’s state-run pharmaceutical firm, the Government Pharmaceutical Organization (GPO), permission to manufacture generic versions of drugs that fight heart ...
More Scrutiny for CIRM and Big-Government Health Care
State Senator Sheila Kuehl, California’s leading partisan of government monopoly health care, has assumed the role of consumer watchdog. Her new measure, SB 1565, “Stem Cell Research – Public Accountability and Access,” targets problems with the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM). Some may wonder if the senator should be ...
Impact – March 2008
PRI Ideas in Action – March 2008 Policy Update and Monthly Impact Report PRI continues to impact public policy in California, the nation, and abroad. Click below to view PRI’s recent contributions.
Re-opening a Community Hospital: Union Power Trumps Patient Rights
Way back last August, I wrote about the tragic closure of Los Angeles’ Martin Luther King, Jr.-Harbor hospital, the County’s safety-net hospital for LA’s troubled Watts neighborhood. After 35 years of government mismanagement, the death of a woman abandoned on the ER floor for three quarters of an hour was ...
Alaska’s Tort Gold Rush Stalls: Eli Lilly Shakedown Stumbles
Back in 2006, Alaska’s Attorney-General (like many others) decided he could mine some gold from a successful drug company: in this case, Eli Lilly & Co. Zyprexa, a successful psychiatric drug from Lilly, has also been associated with the side effect of obesity. Alaska alleged that Lilly was slow to ...
Ranking Health Care in the States: Promises and Pitfalls
As the scribbler of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, the only piece of health policy research that ranks states’ laws and regulations according to the principles of free markets and individual choice, I always look forward to the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality’s State Snapshots, which derive from ...
Los Angeles Times Health Care Whiplash!
Reading the Los Angeles Times, you might think there are two different Los Angeles, in two parallel universes. On the one hand, Karl Mannheim and Jamie Court criticize Hillary Clinton’s and Barrack Obama’s proposals for mandatory, private, health insurance by correctly asserting that that the Constitution does not give lawmakers ...
A Strange Way to Help Patients: California Nurses Association Strikes Again!
I suppose if I were a patient at one of Sutter Health’s ten hospitals in Northern California, now at the mid-point of a ten-day long nursing strike, I might find some cold comfort in the California Nurses Association’s claim that this walk-out by 4,000 RNs is a “dramatic stand for ...
Convenient Clinics: Becoming Part of the Problem?
I hate to write this, but there are increasing signs that one of the most significant disruptive forces in American health care today is slowly being sucked into the same old way of doing business. I speak of the convenient clinics. I’m not saying the news is all bad. The ...
