Health Care

The Big Health-Care CON

by Michael Tennant June 28, 2012

For decades governments have been passing laws and regulations with the stated goal of bringing down health-care costs. For just as long libertarians have been pointing out that government policies such as Medicare, Medicaid, physician licensing, pharmaceutical regulations, and insurance mandates are at the root of the problem and that every attempt to fix the problem without addressing those ...

Will Supreme Court’s Ignorance Torpedo Americans’ Freedom?

by James Bovard June 21, 2012

Americans have never had reliable protection against the ignorance of the Supreme Court. During the past 80 years, Supreme Court justices have routinely rubber-stamped government policies that they grossly failed to understand. Black-robed economic illiteracy is perhaps the Obama administration’s best hope in the Court’s pending decision on the constitutionality of Obamacare. At the oral arguments in late March, neither ...

Britain’s “Fat and Fags” Health Policy

by Wendy McElroy May 8, 2012

A terrible term has entered the healthcare debate now raging in Britain: “lifestyle rationing.” Given the predictability with which social trends cross the Atlantic, and given a looming Obamacare, Americans would be wise to eavesdrop closely on this conversation. “Lifestyle rationing” refers to denying medical care to those who make unhealthy lifestyle choices, such as smoking and becoming obese. At ...

Obamacare and Unlimited Government

by Tim Kelly April 20, 2012

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” has undergone oral arguments before the Supreme Court, and its constitutionality is now being pondered by the nine justices. The court’s decision is due out sometime in June. While the 2010 health-care law is atrocious public policy and clearly an unconstitutional power grab by the federal government, there is no guarantee ...

Health Insurance Mandate: Immoral, Unnecessary

by Sheldon Richman March 28, 2012

The Obama administration argued to the U.S. Supreme Court this week that people must be compelled to buy medical insurance (designed by the government) or the national medical-insurance market will fail. Thus, Obamacare advocates say, the insurance mandate is consistent with the powers delegated under the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The argument, however, contains a fatal flaw. If ...

Be Careful What You Wish For

by Rich Schwartzman January 13, 2012

Mitt Romney’s recent comment about how he would repeal Obamacare if elected president was almost laughable. After all, Romney was the man who brought the same type of mandatory health coverage to Massachusetts when he was that state’s governor. Government healthcare has been a political issue for generations, and interest accelerated during the Clinton years, when it was called “Hillarycare.” ...

Eliminate Medicine Shortages with Imports

by Fergus Hodgson November 4, 2011

Pharmaceutical drugs are in scant supply in the United States relative to their demand — a “serious and growing threat to public health,” says President Obama’s latest executive order. The number of prescription-drug shortages, the order continues, has almost tripled in the past five years, and half of pharmacists and purchasing agents are utilizing “gray-market” dealers. According to ...

The Supreme Court and Obamacare

by Laurence M. Vance October 11, 2011

The new term of the Supreme Court has just begun. All eyes are on the court, as it is expected to hear for the first time a case against Obamacare. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), more popularly known as Obamacare, passed the Senate on Christmas Eve of 2009, passed the House on March 21, 2010, and was ...

Parallels Between Liberty and Health

by Rich Schwartzman September 30, 2011

There are interesting parallels between those in the libertarian movement and some people involved in the health industry. I’m referring to those who no longer pledge allegiance to formal Western medical traditions run by the AMA and Big Pharma through the federal government. The parallels arise naturally. Both of us are involved in challenging an incomplete, and inconsistent mainstream orthodoxy. ...

Stripping the Fat from Rights

by Wendy McElroy September 27, 2011

Gov.Rick Snyder of Michigan wants doctors to track the body mass index (BMI) of children through a database that currently tracks immunizations and then to report the collected data to the state. (BMI is the ratio between a persons weight and the square of his height; it is viewed as an indication of whether that persons weight ...

Sexually Biased Insurance Mandates: Concealed Taxes Set to Backfire

by Fergus Hodgson August 9, 2011

Proponents of the latest federal mandates on medical insurance, targeted solely at women, defend them with claims that they will save money, improve health, and reduce unwanted pregnancies. Such confidence in this lopsided government coercion is either naive or disingenuous. A shift toward “preventive care” and fewer subsequent treatments is the supposed mechanism for cost savings. But that ...

Not Ending Medicare As We Know It

by Laurence M. Vance May 19, 2011

Capitol Police recently arrested 89 protesters from the disability rights group ADAPT for occupying the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building. They were demonstrating against the proposed changes in Medicaid in the recently passed House budget resolution that would reduce the program’s funding and turn it into block grants to the states. “Block grants kill,” read ...