Pacific Research Institute

Here’s a prescription for mid-sized businesses providing workers with health care

March 19, 2019

Healthcare

Small businesses and large corporations have been spared some of Obamacare’s most burdensome regulations. Small firms are exempt from the employer mandate requiring them to offer coverage. Large ones don’t have to adhere to the law’s essential health benefits mandates. Mid-sized businesses haven’t been so lucky....

Don’t Scapegoat Charter Schools For School Districts’ Fiscal Woes

March 19, 2019

Education

Governor Gavin Newsom’s move to have State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond create an expert panel to review the financial impact of charter schools on regular public schools, and put out a report by July, smells like an attempt to scapegoat charter schools. First, comments...

Across the Country, Unions are Waging War on Charter Schools

March 18, 2019

Education

A combination of powerful aggressive teacher unions and compliant state and local politicians have produced a perfect storm that threatens to destroy the future of charter schools and the children who benefit from them. Charter schools are publicly funded schools independent of school districts, which have...

Medicare for All Won’t Result in Better Health Outcomes

March 18, 2019

Healthcare

New Jersey Senator Cory Booker claims Medicare for All would "save lives." Vermont's own Senator Bernie Sanders promises it would end "the disgrace of tens of thousands of Americans dying every year from preventable deaths." But a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research finds little evidence to support those...

Desperately Seeking a Reformer to Head the FDA

March 14, 2019

Healthcare

Federal regulation affects our lives every day in more ways than we realize. The Food and Drug Administration alone regulates products that account for more than a trillion dollars annually—25 cents of every consumer dollar; and the average cost (including out-of-pocket expenses and opportunity costs)...

Green New Deal would cause a new Depression

March 13, 2019

Environment

Democrat firebrands Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey just unveiled their “Green New Deal,” a multi-trillion-dollar effort to overhaul the energy industry and slash America’s net greenhouse gas emissions to zero within a decade. The legislation’s title is fitting. The original New Deal failed to...

America’s Citrus Fruits Are Being Decimated By An Incurable Disease — We Need GM Science to Save Them

March 12, 2019

Healthcare

Farmers in the major U.S. citrus-producing regions—Florida, California, Texas and Arizona, in particular—are facing a plague of epic proportions. Oranges and a range of other citrus fruits are being decimated by an incurable disease, a lethal, bacterial infection known as "citrus greening"—or Huanglongbing. It is spread by...

Feds battle opioid abuse with a circular firing squad

March 11, 2019

Healthcare

By Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. and Josh Bloom, Ph.D. The ongoing battle to control opioid addiction has not gone well. Many of the government’s efforts have been medically and scientifically flawed and unproductive. Some have even been counterproductive. Public policy is in disarray. A Feb. 1 article in...

Research integrity and why bad science has become such a problem

March 11, 2019

Healthcare

By S. Stanley Young and Henry I. Miller, M.S., M.D. Science depends on corroboration — that is, researchers verify others' results, often making incremental advances as they do so. The nature of science dictates that no research paper is ever considered to be the final word,...

Protect Patients By Repealing the Medical Device Tax

March 11, 2019

Business Economics

You don’t make health care more affordable by increasing its cost. Yet that is precisely what the currently suspended medical device tax threatens unless Congress permanently repeals it. Although permanent repeal failed in the last Congress, Senators Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) have...