Health Care
Commentary
Don’t Blame Breakthrough Drugs for Costs, Fix Hospital Market
America’s healthcare tab has hit a new record. According to federal data published late last month, national health expenditures climbed to nearly $5.7 trillion in 2025, an increase of 7.3% over the previous year. The report noted that retail prescription drug spending rose 11%, driven in part by increased use ...
Commentary
The hidden contracts keeping hospital prices high
Hospital prices have more than tripled since 2000, rising over twice as fast as overall inflation. A new White House Council of Economic Advisers report helps explain why. Dominant hospital systems have quietly insulated themselves from competition through restrictive contract terms. The three practices are known as anti-steering, anti-tiering, and ...
Commentary
Trump’s Push for Healthcare Transparency, Starting With Hospital Prices, Can Go Even Further
The Trump administration is making hospital price transparency a centerpiece of its Make America Healthy Again agenda — and it has a chance to go even further toward achieving this goal. Earlier this month, federal regulators warned more than 500 hospitals that they could be violating federal requirements to disclose ...
Commentary
Medicare Takes A Smart Step Toward Site-Neutral Payments
One of Medicare’s most puzzling rules has nothing to do with the care patients receive. For many routine outpatient services, it pays substantially more when care is delivered in a hospital-owned facility than when the exact same service is performed in an independent physician’s office or ambulatory surgery center. This ...
Commentary
ACA’s Patient Choice Boondoggle Not Aging Well
In an interview prior to the recent official opening of his presidential library, former President Barack Obama was asked to name his greatest accomplishment. The first thing that came to mind was the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As he put it, “For all the resistance from our political opposition, the ...
Commentary
Trump’s healthcare fraud crackdown is paying off
Federal prosecutors recently announced that they’d charged 455 defendants in connection with more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud involving Medicare, Medicaid, and other public healthcare programs. The news serves as a vivid reminder of just how much taxpayer money can disappear when oversight falls short. According to the Justice ...
Biosimilars
New Study: States Could Save Up to $1.8 Billion Annually by Prioritizing Lower-Cost Biosimilar Medicines
At a time when states across the country are grappling with significant budget challenges, a new study from the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute – the nonpartisan, California-based, free market think tank – finds that state employee health plans could save up to $1.8 ...
Commentary
States are grumbling about Medicaid work requirements. Taxpayers shouldn’t.
States are grumbling about the cost of implementing new work requirements for working-age Medicaid beneficiaries. “[I]t’s taking a significant amount of financial resources away from a system that people depend on,” Marvin B. Figueroa, the Virginia secretary of Health and Human Services, recently said. But that argument gets the issue ...
340B
Dr. Wayne Winegarden featured in Golden State Today: 340B Transparency is “Nonexistent”
California economist: ‘The transparency is nonexistent’ in federal 340b drug discount program By A. R. Baird A California healthcare economist is calling for greater transparency in the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program, arguing that lawmakers, taxpayers and even participating hospitals lack sufficient reporting to determine whether billions of dollars in ...
340B
Listen to Wayne Winegarden on the Health Policy Podcast: The $100 Billion Loophole: Why 340B Reform is Essential
In the Health Policy Podcast episode featuring Wayne Winegarden from the Pacific Research Institute, the discussion centers on the 340B Drug Pricing Program. Winegarden critiques the program’s lack of transparency and its unintended consequences, which have led to large hospital systems profiting at the expense of smaller institutions and patients. ...
Don’t Blame Breakthrough Drugs for Costs, Fix Hospital Market
America’s healthcare tab has hit a new record. According to federal data published late last month, national health expenditures climbed to nearly $5.7 trillion in 2025, an increase of 7.3% over the previous year. The report noted that retail prescription drug spending rose 11%, driven in part by increased use ...
The hidden contracts keeping hospital prices high
Hospital prices have more than tripled since 2000, rising over twice as fast as overall inflation. A new White House Council of Economic Advisers report helps explain why. Dominant hospital systems have quietly insulated themselves from competition through restrictive contract terms. The three practices are known as anti-steering, anti-tiering, and ...
Trump’s Push for Healthcare Transparency, Starting With Hospital Prices, Can Go Even Further
The Trump administration is making hospital price transparency a centerpiece of its Make America Healthy Again agenda — and it has a chance to go even further toward achieving this goal. Earlier this month, federal regulators warned more than 500 hospitals that they could be violating federal requirements to disclose ...
Medicare Takes A Smart Step Toward Site-Neutral Payments
One of Medicare’s most puzzling rules has nothing to do with the care patients receive. For many routine outpatient services, it pays substantially more when care is delivered in a hospital-owned facility than when the exact same service is performed in an independent physician’s office or ambulatory surgery center. This ...
ACA’s Patient Choice Boondoggle Not Aging Well
In an interview prior to the recent official opening of his presidential library, former President Barack Obama was asked to name his greatest accomplishment. The first thing that came to mind was the Affordable Care Act (ACA). As he put it, “For all the resistance from our political opposition, the ...
Trump’s healthcare fraud crackdown is paying off
Federal prosecutors recently announced that they’d charged 455 defendants in connection with more than $6.5 billion in alleged fraud involving Medicare, Medicaid, and other public healthcare programs. The news serves as a vivid reminder of just how much taxpayer money can disappear when oversight falls short. According to the Justice ...
New Study: States Could Save Up to $1.8 Billion Annually by Prioritizing Lower-Cost Biosimilar Medicines
At a time when states across the country are grappling with significant budget challenges, a new study from the Center for Medical Economics and Innovation at the Pacific Research Institute – the nonpartisan, California-based, free market think tank – finds that state employee health plans could save up to $1.8 ...
States are grumbling about Medicaid work requirements. Taxpayers shouldn’t.
States are grumbling about the cost of implementing new work requirements for working-age Medicaid beneficiaries. “[I]t’s taking a significant amount of financial resources away from a system that people depend on,” Marvin B. Figueroa, the Virginia secretary of Health and Human Services, recently said. But that argument gets the issue ...
Dr. Wayne Winegarden featured in Golden State Today: 340B Transparency is “Nonexistent”
California economist: ‘The transparency is nonexistent’ in federal 340b drug discount program By A. R. Baird A California healthcare economist is calling for greater transparency in the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program, arguing that lawmakers, taxpayers and even participating hospitals lack sufficient reporting to determine whether billions of dollars in ...
Listen to Wayne Winegarden on the Health Policy Podcast: The $100 Billion Loophole: Why 340B Reform is Essential
In the Health Policy Podcast episode featuring Wayne Winegarden from the Pacific Research Institute, the discussion centers on the 340B Drug Pricing Program. Winegarden critiques the program’s lack of transparency and its unintended consequences, which have led to large hospital systems profiting at the expense of smaller institutions and patients. ...