- Arthur Laffer: requiring health care providers to post prices for their medical services could save more than $500 billion a year.
- A disappointing discovery: Jim Jordan was willing to Jordan increase the $10,000 cap on state and local tax deductions – benefiting wealthy taxpayers in blue states – in order to get votes for the speakership.
- Study: repealing Certificate of Need laws leads to more hospitals in urban and rural areas.
- $233 million: what blue states receive that they wouldn’t receive if federal grants reflected these state’s population losses.
Category: Authors
NYT: Are Supervised Drug-Use Facilities the Answer to Drug Overdoses?
Let’s assume there is a risky product, of which the government wants to discourage consumption. The good is dangerous, not infrequently killing people accidentally. The substance is of dubious quality, highly regulated yet poorly made and inconsistent. The products within this category are mislabeled, misbranded and often adulterated with harmful chemicals and other additives. Yet, these goods are popular among some people, becoming habit forming both psychological and physiological. The goods are blamed for social ills, including crime, homelessness, shiftlessness, poor health and even death. How should government discourage consumption of products like this? I’m talking about illegal drugs of course.
Friday Links
- Drug and device shortages are affecting patient care.
- Schwab: how a Roth IRA can reduce the Part B and Part D premiums for seniors.
- EBRI study: a 65-year-old couple needs as much as $383,000 in savings to have a 90% chance of covering their health care expenses for the rest of their lives.
- Yglesias interviews Melissa Kearney on two-parent privilege. Recommended. But she underestimates the penalties the welfare state imposes on marriage. See The Marriage Tax.
- Milton Friedman was right: there would be no lasting conflict in the Middle East if they had a laissez-faire economic regime.
- Obamacare gives insurers perverse incentive to buy doctors’ clinics, pharmacies, etc. And, that’s what they are doing.
Thursday Links
- Gingrich and Jindal on the House GOP HSA bills.
- 96% of CDC’s COVID boosters for kids are still unused.
- From Michael Cannon’s new book: A 2016 study found that Medicare paid low-quality hospitals an average of $2,698 more per patient than it paid high-quality hospitals.
- Cato study: decriminalizing prostitution decrease the incidence of rape.
- International surveys show that wealthier is happier – but not always. The average Costa Rican is just as happy as the average American.