Fiscal Tax Blog

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A Prescription for Decline: Biden’s Drug Price Controls Are Hurting the Patients It Promised to Serve

Four years after its passage, the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) drug pricing provisions have not delivered the seamless savings the Left promised. Instead, a growing body of peer-reviewed research, investor surveys, and clinical trial data has revealed that this law is not only problematic to its core, but also riddled with structural flaws: specifically, the creation of a small molecule “pill penalty.”

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The Real Profiteers in Healthcare Aren’t Drugmakers

Pressure is building on Capitol Hill for Congress to codify President Trump’s “most favored nation” drug-pricing initiative into law. The administration has already struck deals with more than a dozen drugmakers to sell medicines to Medicaid, the federal-state health plan for low-income individuals and the disabled, at the lowest prices paid by other developed nations. Now lawmakers are debating whether to impose the same framework across the U.S. market.

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Applaud Trade, Avoid Price Controls

In an era where American leadership on the global stage has been redefined by bold, unapologetic negotiation, President Trump has proven himself a master of the art of the deal and using existing and creating new leverage. From renegotiating NAFTA into the USMCA in the first term, extracting concessions from China through targeted tariffs, to pressuring European allies on defense spending and trade imbalances, his administration has wielded trade policy like a precision tool. These…

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Five ways for Republicans to win on health care affordability

For most of the past 40 years, pollsters have asked voters: Which party do you trust more on health care? The answer has been pretty much the same over this whole period. Voters trust the Democrats more, and sometimes by a 2-1 margin. Republicans shouldn’t be afraid of the issue. Democrats have pretty much unilaterally designed the medical care system we have now. They own it. The outcome isn’t happy. We are getting spiraling costs with less access and, in…

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Republicans Can Win on Healthcare Affordability

For most of the last 40 years, pollsters have asked voters: Which party do you trust more on healthcare? The answer has been pretty much the same over this whole period. Voters trust Democrats more, sometimes by a two-to-one margin. When I’ve asked my Republican politicos why that is, the answer I typically receive is: Our party doesn’t do healthcare. Then they crouch in the fetal position. Well, the GOP certainly better start “doing healthcare,”…

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Insurance Scam

At Unleash Prosperity, our favorite word is “profit.” Profits make the world go round and are the best antidote to poverty. But when the business makes most of its profits off of government and taxpayer dollars, we’re not so excited. That’s the case with the $1.7 trillion health industrial complex, which is financed mostly through government subsidies. This chart shows that hospital earnings have doubled since 2015 (not adjusted for inflation). Profits are down in…

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Make Japan Pay Their Fair Share for Drugs, Mr. President

Donald Trump will soon meet with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. Near the top of the agenda should be an effort to secure a pledge from her to ease Japan’s price controls on US-made brand drugs. UP senior fellow Tomas Philipson makes a compelling case in the Washington Examiner: For decades, Japan, the world’s fifth-largest economy, has artificially suppressed its spending on innovative medicines, effectively freeriding on U.S. rewards for innovation… That free-riding is unfair. But…

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Drug pricing should be near top of agenda at Trump-Takaichi meeting

President Donald Trump will soon host Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi at the White House, where the two leaders will seek to strengthen the United States-Japan alliance and boost both countries’ economies. The president can advance these goals simultaneously in healthcare by urging Takaichi to reform how her aging nation’s healthcare system pays for prescription drugs. For decades, Japan, the world’s fifth-largest economy, has artificially suppressed its spending on innovative medicines, effectively freeriding on U.S. rewards for innovation. The country’s government-run health system conducts annual pricing reviews and…