A while back I wrote about how an avalanche of blockbuster drugs face patent expiration within the next few years. Many of these are biologic drugs, an expensive type of drug derived from living substances. The cost is high. By some accounts, the top 1% of specialty drugs account for about half of all drug spending. Many of these are biologics. Biologic drugs are not as easy to copy as typical small molecule drugs made from simple organic compounds. For this reason, there are no biogeneric drugs. Rather, there are what are called biosimilars, since competitors must develop a similar drug and assess it to ensure it is, well, similar.
Saturday Links – 12 September 2026
- Chris Ruffo on Why Medicare Advantage works so much better than Medicaid managed care.
- Trump to Send $500 to ACA enrollees who do not get subsidies.
- Medicare pays hospital-owned clinics up to 670 percent more than independent physician offices for the exact same care.
- Ken Thorpe: insurers are not helping people stay healthy and avoid sickness. Solution: more regulation. [What Thorpe misses is that unwise regulation is why insurer’s try to attract the healthy and avoid the sick.]
- Trump’s $5,000 fantasy.
Friday Links – 11 September 2026
That would cost $387.6 billion over the 10-year period from 2027–2036… That is like starting the Medicare Part D drug program over again.
- Good news: Weight loss drugs won’t make you crazy.
- US manufacturing is back.
- More results on welfare reform:
“In 1994, before welfare reform, about 46 percent of single-parent families received Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC)—a welfare program that provided cash benefits with few strings attached. By 2024, however, only 8 percent of single-parent families received benefits from Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)—the program that replaced AFDC in 1996.”
Paragon on then Democrat’s IRA bill: “It is clearer than ever that the IRA raised overall costs and resulted in dramatically higher premiums and larger federal deficits.”
Direct-To-Consumer Medical Testing Rarely Makes Us Healthier
While I had some symptoms I wanted checked out, almost none of the tests improved my health. Indeed, researchers tell us that widespread diagnostic testing in asymptomatic people is a waste of money and often leads to unnecessary care. For instance, the whole-body CT scan from 15 years ago found a “spot on my liver that was statistically unlikely to be anything serious” according to the report. I took them at their word, but I could have easily gone to a doctor to chase down a benign cyst that was probably there from birth