Health Care

Blame Government for the Vaccine Shortage

by Sheldon Richman October 27, 2004

We now know that when the government tries to suppress the production of a drug, say, heroin, supplies nevertheless remain plentiful. Yet when the government tries to guarantee production of a drug, say, flu vaccine, supplies can run short, endangering the people most vulnerable to disease. Thats government for you. The government, especially the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), interferes ...

Bush’s Brave New World

by Sheldon Richman October 6, 2004

President Bush’s little-publicized New Freedom Commission on Mental Health has proposed comprehensive mental-illness screening for all Americans. If this proposal is carried out, which is Bush’s intention, no adult or child will be safe from intrusive probing by “experts,” backed by drug companies, who believe that mental illness ...

America’s Socialized Health Care

by Lawrence D. Wilson September 1, 2004

Health-care systems in most developed nations are in financial trouble. Health benefits are being cut back because of exploding costs. Degenerative illnesses such as diabetes and cancer are at epidemic levels in spite of new drugs and treatments. While doctors, politicians, and insurers blame each other, they rarely mention the real problem. Skyrocketing costs are due to the structure of ...

Government by Euphemism

by Sheldon Richman July 2, 2004

People live by political euphemisms. Sometimes they die by them, as when civilians are bombed in the name of liberating them. There are less lethal euphemisms, but since all of them embody dishonesty (the word euphemism itself is a euphemism), they all have bad consequences. Those that do not kill may merely make us poorer and less free. Most politicians ...

Why Do Libertarians Ignore the Therapeutic State?

by Sheldon Richman July 1, 2004

It’s a truism that libertarians care about liberty. For libertarians, liberty belongs to the individual. Groups are free only in the sense that each member is free. A group free to coerce its members is, in the libertarian worldview, a contradiction in terms. This position is straightforward, and it ought to be uncontroversial. Facts and ...

In Defense of a Free Market in Health Care

by Robert D. Helmholdt April 16, 2004

None of the so-called health-care reforms expressed in a plethora of political speeches will work, because all government reforms in this area are simply tinkering at the edges of a terminally ill and fatally flawed program. Its just political preening in a quest for votes, popularity, and power. The last thing we need is more Washington, D.C.-style social science ...

Health-Care Hilarity

by Scott McPherson March 22, 2004

Massachusetts’s U.S. senator and likely Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry, is being criticized for boasting of foreign political endorsements he might not be able to substantiate. Hoping to paint Kerry as dishonest on this issue, Secretary of State Colin Powell even went on the Fox News Channel to demand ...

Warning: Obesity (and Lying about It) Could be Hazardous to Your Health

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 15, 2004

Lest anyone have any doubts that our federal daddy is carefully watching over his adult-children, the Food and Drug Administration has formally announced a campaign against obesity among Americans. You remember the FDA, right? That’s the federal bureaucratic agency that wrongfully leaked the information that ultimately led to the conviction of ...

Feeding Obesity

by Scott McPherson February 13, 2004

Obesity-related medical costs for 2003 totaled $75 billion, according to research conducted by the nonprofit group RTI International and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And, their report concludes, taxpayers are footing more than half the bill for these ailments. How’s this? Because, reports the ...

Democrats Play Brer Rabbit on Medicare

by Sheldon Richman December 15, 2003

Is it cynical to think that the Democrats are playing Brer Rabbit in begging not to be thrown into the briar patch called Republican reform of Medicare? Maybe. But I’m tempted to think it nonetheless. Democrats such as Sen. Edward M. Kennedy complain that the Republican approach to Medicare in general and ...

Bad Medicine

by Sheldon Richman November 1, 2003

Those who have been hungering for a real political debate in this country can’t help but be deliriously overcome with the news that CBS’s 60 Minutes will feature 10 face-offs between former Democratic President Bill Clinton and former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole. The history of political thought will ...

Reimporting Drugs Is OK, But It Misses the Point

by Sheldon Richman July 30, 2003

The U.S. House and Senate have approved bills to legalize the reimportation of U.S.-manufactured prescription drugs from Canada and elsewhere. Here’s a case of Congress doing something right for the wrong reason. It’s right because the U.S. government has no business telling the American people what they may and may ...