Will Microbes Finally Force Modernization of the American Health Care System?
Mike Magee MD
Science has a way of punishing humans for their arrogance.
In 1996, Dr. Michael Osterholm found himself rather lonely and isolated in medical research circles. This was the adrenaline-infused decade of blockbuster pharmaceuticals focused squarely on chronic debilitating diseases of aging.
And yet, there was Osterholm, in Congressional testimony delivering this message: “I am here to bring you the sobering and unfortunate news that our ability to detect and monitor infectious disease threats to health in this country is in serious jeopardy…For 12 of the States or territories, there is no one w...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 14, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Ryan Bose-Roy Tags: Health Policy Public Health Healthcare system infectious diseases microbes Mike Magee Source Type: blogs
A Flawed Letter Opposing Electoral Count Act Reform
Walter OlsonAn outfit called the Conservative Action Project yesterday published a group letter opposing near ‐term Republican cooperation with Capitol Hill Democrats on reform of the Electoral Count Act. This is among the first indications that much of anyone besides former President Donald Trump himself is cool toward ECA reform. The letter and signers arehere.A main theme of the letter is that Democrats will try to pack into ECA reform theton ofbad stuff that was in the now ‐failed election omnibus bills. Of course GOPers could just respond, “Nothing doing, but we’re happy to work with you on a c...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 12, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
The Fed Doesn ’t Rule the Stock Market
Alan ReynoldsAWall Street Journal editorial ( “Inflation Haunts the Biden Economy”), fears that “one risk is the Fed gets spooked bythe market reaction to its tightening. ” However, the stock market is rarely hyper‐sensitive to Fed statements or actions for more than a few days.“Stocks Turn Lower AfterFed Announcement” was theJournal ’sJanuary 26 headline, yet the Fed chairman did not actually announce anything much different from what was already expected – namely, phasing‐out the “Quantitative Easing” routine plus several quarter‐point increases in the IORB (Interest on Reserve Balance...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 11, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Alan Reynolds Source Type: blogs
The Border Wall Didn ’t Work
David J. BierOne of former President Donald Trump ’s main presidential accomplishments was constructing hundreds of miles of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. President Joe Biden temporarily suspended work on some unfinished sections in January 2021, but is nowplugging some “holes” in Trump’s wall andaddingsome other portions. He shouldn ’t bother. A few miles won’t fix what hundreds of miles already failed to. It’s time to just admit: Trump’s wall did not work.It ' s true that Trump did not finish every mile he wanted, but what he did construct was significant. Trumpbuilt 455 miles of border fencing of hi...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 10, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: David J. Bier Source Type: blogs
5 Years Later the United States Is Still Paying for Its TPP Blunder
Colin GrabowLast month —January 23 to be exact —marked the five-year anniversary of President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement. The country has been paying for it ever since.Comprised of the United States and eleven other Pacific Rim countries —including economic heavyweight Japan—the TPP was found by a 2016Cato analysis to result in net trade liberalization. A study by the U.S. International Trade Commission calculated a real U.S. GDP increase of$42.7 billion through 2032 as a result of TPP membership while a Peterson Institute for Internati...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 10, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Colin Grabow Source Type: blogs
All Roads Lead to Big Government: Heritage Takes on Big Tech
ConclusionAlthough not persuasive as policy analysis, Frederick ' s paper is of use to those interested in the history and anthropology of American conservatism. The paper embraces the use of political buzzwords such as " woke, " and " left-wing orthodoxy " while using words such as " monopoly " and " oligopoly " in a manner that suggest they have suddenly changed meaning. This kind of rhetoric will be familiar to those who have been paying attention to " Big Tech " policy debates over the last couple of years. Much of it is not a surprise. What may well be a surprise to many readers is that America ' s leading conservativ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 9, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Matthew Feeney, Ryan Bourne Source Type: blogs
Rogue Governors, State Legislatures, and the Electoral Count Act
Andy CraigAs Congress works tofind a solution for how to fix the Electoral Count Act, one question getting a lot of attention is how to handle the possibility of bad actors at the state level, such as a governor who refuses to certify the state ' s election winner.It ’s not an entirely theoretical question. InArizona andGeorgia, there are currently Republican gubernatorial candidates who say they would not have certified Biden ’s win in 2020, which the incumbent Republican governors both did. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)has said that this is a particularly complicated question for the bipartisan ECA working group led by Sen...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 9, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Andy Craig Source Type: blogs
This (Steel) Deal Is Getting Worse All the Time
Scott LincicomeYesterday, the Biden administrationannounced anagreement with Japan to lift some of the U.S. “national security” tariffs on Japanese steel products that the Trump administration imposed in 2018 pursuant toSection 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. As with a similar European deal announced last Fall (see ourwriteup here) and implemented in January, the U.S.-Japan deal has been lauded as “ending” Trump’s steel tariffs and “mending ties with a major ally, ” but a closer examination reveals it to share many, if not more, of the EU agreement’s shortcomings and to continue President Trump...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 9, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Scott Lincicome Source Type: blogs
Encouraging Signals from the Justice Department on Safe Consumption Sites
Jeffrey A. SingerThe Associated Pressreports the U.S. Department of Justice announced it is “evaluating supervised consumption sites, including discussions with state and local regulators about appropriate guardrails for such sites, as part of an overall approach to harm reduction and public safety.” This is welcome news.As I explained in a 2019Cato Policy Analysis, safe consumption sites (also called “safe injection sites” and “overdose prevention sites”) have established a track record of saving lives and preventing the spread of HIV, hepatitis, and other infectious diseases since the late 1980...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 8, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Jeffrey A. Singer Source Type: blogs
Cyber Road Rage
Brandon ValerianoA recentWired article by Andy Greenberg has raised much interest in the cyber security field as it supports an idea many have been pushing for years, theability to hack ‐back when countries target private entities and individuals. Much like a license forpiracy and privateering, the idea of hunting forward on your own for retribution is more akin to a John Wick movie than the course of international politics.Much like the mind ofDonald Trump and his mythical 400 ‐pound hacker, for Wired, a hacker is a “man in a T‑shirt, pajama pants, and slippers, sitting in his living room night after n...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 4, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Brandon Valeriano Source Type: blogs
Trump ’s Fake Electors and the Electoral Count Act
Andy CraigTheNew York Times has obtained two internal memos outlining the strategy at play behind one of the 2020 election’s stranger moments: the defeated Republican elector candidates who met and “voted” for Trump in states he hadn’t won. At the time, it was a farcical display and the object of widespread mockery. In Michigan, the pseudo-electors weren’t even allowed into the state capitol on the day in mid-December designated for members of the Electoral College to cast their ballots.Now, greater scrutiny is being placed on the stunt, which seems to have been more central than was known at the time to Trump ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - February 3, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Andy Craig Source Type: blogs
Enough with the Nazis already
You have no doubt heard about the Nazi rally in Orlando the other day, which Governor DeathSantis never got around to condemning until he was asked about it at a news conference. The protests have been met with disgust fromDemocrats andRepublicans alike. However, DeSantis did not publicly condemn the marchers until Monday during a press conference, and then largely to deflect blame on to his political opponents.“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to do with that, we’re not playing their...
Source: Stayin' Alive - February 3, 2022 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
The 2020 Wisconsin Presidential Election, Under the Magnifying Glass
Walter OlsonI ’d been meaning to do a post about the Wisconsin Institute of Law and Liberty ’s “A Report on the 2020 Election”, an exhaustive (136 pp.) investigation into the 2020 presidential returns in the Badger State, which I liked a lot. Last week, though, the editorialists of the Wall Street Journal deftlysummarized some of the report ’s highlights, so I ’ll save time and summarize that.As background,WILL is a well ‐established nonprofit that advocates and litigates over a range of such issues as school choice, economic liberty, and the academic freedom of dissident professor...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 31, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Walter Olson Source Type: blogs
Matthew ’s health care tidbits: #What is insurance again?
Each week I’ve been adding a brief tidbits section to the THCB Reader, our weekly newsletter that summarizes the best of THCB that week (Sign up here!). Then I had the brainwave to add them to the blog. They’re short and usually not too sweet! –Matthew Holt
For my health care tidbits this week, I was reminded on Twitter that many Americans really don’t understand health insurance. A spine surgeon no less in this thread (no jokes about arrogance please) was telling me that he was paying ~$8,000 a year ($4,000 in insurance and $4,000 in deductible) before he got to “use” his insurance–which, as his medical...
Source: The Health Care Blog - January 31, 2022 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt Health Care Costs Insurance Pre-existing conditions Source Type: blogs
On Justice Breyer ’s Retirement and Where We Go From Here
Ilya ShapiroIt ’s long been the conventional wisdom that Justice Breyer would retire this year and that has now been borne out, albeit earlier than the jurist apparently wanted it to be made public. With the Democrats’ nominal Senate majority in severe jeopardy in this fall’s midterms, the politically savvy Breyer—who had been Ted Kennedy’s counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee—knew what he had to do to facilitate a smooth confirmation for his successor.Indeed, we haven ’t had a confirmation process under divided government since 1991, when then ‐Senator Joe Biden presided over an explosive...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - January 26, 2022 Category: American Health Authors: Ilya Shapiro Source Type: blogs
