News
Fox News | Lawmakers Debate Cost-Effectiveness of Medicare
The new healthcare law seeks to cap future Medicare spending to a measure of inflation, but if it grows faster, something called the Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB, is charged with finding savings.
National Journal | The Future of Medicine: The Doc-in-a-Phone
The thrilling news is that the health care field is teeming with possibility. In the developing world, seemingly simple oral-rehydration therapy for children is an innovation that saves lives and money.
WSJ | Most Hospitals Face Drug Shortages
The vast majority of U.S. hospitals have restricted the use of life-saving chemotherapy drugs and other critical-care medications in the past six months to cope with unprecedented shortages, according to a survey released Tuesday.
Econ Comments
AEI | IPAB: The Controversial Consequences for Medicare and Seniors
Changes to the way Medicare pays for and covers medical services affect too many people in significant ways to be made behind the closed doors of an insulated committee. How Medicare prices medical products and services has sweeping implications across the entire private marketplace.
WSJ | Will Washington Find the Cure for Cancer?
Americans generally agree that our economic future depends on nurturing new ideas. "The first step in winning the future," as President Obama said in his 2011 State of the Union speech, "is encouraging American innovation." Unfortunately, the actions of the administration and the proposals of some in Congress may significantly impede innovation in my industry—biopharmaceuticals—for the foreseeable future.
Blogs
Heritage Foundation | Paul Ryan Schools HHS Secretary on Patient-Centered Medicare Reform
As Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) pointed out during the hearing, there’s a better way to solve Medicare’s financial crisis and improve the quality of the program for those its serves at the same time—without government rationing, indirect or otherwise. As he explains,
AEI: American | Healthcare Jobs Keep a Listing Ship Afloat
In every decade since the 1930s, total health services employment has increased two to three times as fast as the number of workers in the general economy or private business. Since 1930, if health services employment had increased only as fast as in the rest of the economy, the health sector would have employed nearly 11 million fewer workers in 2009. That’s the equivalent of one-twelfth of all non-farm employment in that year.
