Health Care
June 22, 2022 — Steven Hayward

As the COVID pandemic unfolded in 2020, I predicted that before it was over, we’d surely hear calls for a cabinet level “Department of Pandemic Planning” or some other equivalent of the Department of Homeland Security that we set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to “coordinate” government agency activity at all levels of government. That prediction has moved a step closer to fulfillment. From the New York Times today:
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May 19, 2022 — John Hinderaker

In the nick of time, the science of infant nutrition has evolved. It is hard not to sympathize with this tweeter’s take: Behold, The Science! It's amazing that @AmerAcadPeds is so flexible with The Science when a Democrat is president.https://t.co/n7SXoYVhSf — NYC Angry Mom (@angrybklynmom) May 19, 2022 This article has the background, with pros and cons about feeding cow’s milk to infants. The obvious question is, if the 12-month
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May 15, 2022 — Steven Hayward

So I pull up Fox News to find an opinion article titled, “It’s Time for Medicare for All.” And I notice the byline of the purported author: “Sen. Bernie Sanders.” To be sure, the article that follows does sound quite a lot like the real Bernie Sanders, the Socialist Democrat from Vermont. But it’s hard to imagine the real Bernie Sanders willingly appearing at Fox News. Though it is hard
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May 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker

Two years ago it was toilet paper, now it is baby formula–a much more serious shortage. I am tuned in to it in part because one of my daughters is the mother of eight-month-old twins and has had a hard time finding formula. What is going on here? My colleague John Phelan looks at the issue and concludes that the culprits are shutdowns and the FDA: What is going on?
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December 20, 2021 — John Hinderaker

Hans Bader at Liberty Unyielding discloses a sickening story from the Biden administration: it is now introducing race into our health care system: [T]he Biden administration is now giving doctors a financial incentive to blame “differences in health outcomes” on “systemic racism” against minorities, and to adopt “value statements” that treat race as a “political” rather than “physiological” reality, even though some health conditions (like sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs disease)
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April 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff

Last night, Joe Biden lied about a range of issues. NRO identifies three of Biden’s deceptions. Phillip Klein exposes Biden’s falsehood regarding health care. Biden claimed that giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for prescription drugs will “strengthen the Affordable Care Act – expand Medicare coverage and benefits – without costing taxpayers one additional penny.” Nonsense. Klein points out that the Congressional Budget Office has twice concluded that
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March 13, 2020 — John Hinderaker

Bernie Sanders says coronavirus is proof that we need socialized medicine. Because China’s socialized health care system has done such a great job? I don’t know. Logic isn’t Bernie’s strong suit. A better analysis comes from Cato’s Dan Mitchell, who begins by noting some liberals’ claims that the virus is an argument for Big Government or, at least, Big Medicine. Dan argues that, on the contrary, the federal government has
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December 17, 2019 — John Hinderaker

Last Friday, Bernie Sanders tweeted an attack on the Mayo Clinic: Mayo Clinic executives have decided to strip away access to health care from tens of thousands of rural Midwesterners—putting profits over people. Under Medicare for All we will end the corporate greed in health care that is leaving rural Americans behind.https://t.co/0niOP7A5TI — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) December 13, 2019 Sanders’s tweet links to a post by a college English teacher
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November 19, 2019 — John Hinderaker

Washington is preoccupied mostly with trivia these days, but if you scour the news you will see that important events are also taking place. Like the Trump administration’s announcement on Friday of two new rules relating to price transparency. Pretty much all non-socialists agree that price competition in medical services needs to be sharpened, and for that to happen, patients need to have skin in the game, and the wherewithal
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November 2, 2019 — Steven Hayward

The opioid crisis has been prominent in the news for the last several years, while more recently the controversy over vaping has erupted to new heights, with the Trump Administration proposing to ban many vaping products. There are some glaring contradictions and ironies between our attitudes and policy responses to both issues, but it takes someone of Sally Satel’s perception to notice these dimensions. Sally Satel, a resident fellow of
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August 7, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff

The left wants to discount the role of mental disturbance in mass shootings. By doing so, it can keep all of the focus on guns and “white supremacy.” In addition, allowing mental disturbance to enter the conversation might lead to a discussion of family breakdown and loss of religious faith. The left wants to steer clear of that discussion at all costs. Hence, we see dishonest news stories, like the
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August 5, 2019 — John Hinderaker

Paul has noted the comments that President Trump made on the weekend’s two mass shootings this morning. His post embeds a video of the president’s speech, which is 10 minutes long. I recommend that you watch it. It was thoughtful, measured, and, in my opinion, struck all the right notes. It consisted in large part of denunciations of the murderers and sympathy for their victims. Beyond that, Trump’s comments were
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June 23, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff

Health care is an issue of utmost importance to many Americans, and polling suggests that, by a considerable margin, voters trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle the issue. But according to this report in the Washington Post, Democratic presidential candidates, by talking so much about “Medicare for all,” aren’t hitting the sweet spot on health care. Instead, they are missing the point. Based on public opinion research, the Post
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June 17, 2019 — John Hinderaker

On Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a final regulation that allows businesses to fund employees who buy health insurance on the individual market–something that until now has been illegal. Today, the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Labor, and the Treasury issued a new policy that will provide hundreds of thousands of employers, including small businesses, a better way to provide health insurance coverage, and
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May 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff

Robert Pear, a reporter for the New York Times, died earlier this week due to a stroke. Pear reported on health care issues for the paper. I’m not a fan of the Times, but was a big fan of Pear. I don’t see how you couldn’t be a fan if you took a serious interest in the health care debate. The obits from the Times and the Washington Post provide
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January 30, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff

Howard Schultz’s independent run for president, if it occurs, will be based on his view that there is a vast amount of space between the two political parties and that voters will flock to a candidate who fills that space. The first proposition is certainly true. The second remains to be tested. Yesterday, Schultz stepped into the space between the parties on health care. He denounced Sen. Kamala Harris’ call
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January 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff

Sen. Kamala Harris backs “Medicare for all” — i.e. the single payer health insurance system that Sen. Bernie Sanders advocates. The “single payer” is the government — i.e., taxpayers. During a CNN town hall, Jake Tapper asked Harris whether her proposal means eliminating private health insurance. Harris reportedly answered in the affirmative, saying she would be okay with cutting insurers out of the mix. As if to justify this, she
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