Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe/Getty Images
The COVID-19 vaccines are among the most effective ever invented.
But when people hear that getting vaccinated may not usher in a return to normalcy or could harm their health, they grow reluctant to get the shots, slowing our march to herd immunity.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 73% of unvaccinated Americans wouldn t take the Johnson & Johnson shot.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute.
This is an opinion column. The thoughts expressed are those of the author.
Californians who support a single payer health care system say it’s time for Gov. Gavin Newsom to keep his campaign promises and take steps toward making the model a reality.
A prime example is legislation in Congress, the Climate Leadership and Environmental Action for our Nation’s (CLEAN) Future Act, which would require states to “consider authorizing measures encouraging deployment of electric vehicle charging stations [and] allowing utilities to recover from ratepayers investments that further deployment of electric vehicle charging networks.”
Proponents claim the proposal is about protecting the interests of historically overburdened communities on the front line. But the reality will be passing along the cost of electric vehicle (EV) charging stations to utility customers in these communities. Those costs would be a regressive tax that disproportionately burdens working-class Americans and benefits those who have the means to purchase electric cars.
Colorado Moves to Scrap Plan to Establish Public Option
Christopher Furlong/Getty
30 Apr 2021
Colorado state officials struck a compromise with the healthcare industry not to establish a state public option, which raises questions about the political feasibility of the healthcare reform proposal.
Colorado state Democrat legislators announced Monday they had struck a deal to scrap plans to establish a public option and instead mandate lower health insurance premiums for Coloradans to buy insurance on the individual or small-group markets.
A public option would allow for government-run health insurance plans to compete against private health insurance plans.
Healthcare experts such as Sally Pipes, the president of the Pacific Research Institute, said a public insurance option competing alongside private insurance would eventually crowd out private health insurance because government-run insurance could operate on a “loss indefinitely.”
No, Biologics Are Not Natural Monopolies
By Robert Popovian, Pharm.D., MS, and Wayne Winegarden, Ph.D.
Biologics are not natural monopolies, as certain individuals continually assert. This assertion threatens future innovations, greater healthcare affordability, and patient access.
It is well understood that biologics have improved our ability to treat diseases such as cancer and autoimmune ailments. Biologics are also expensive; they now represent 43% of invoice spending, and spending has been growing 14.6% annually over the past five years.
Until recently, originator biologics lacked any meaningful competition from less costly off-patent generic copies better known as biosimilars. The biosimilar market in the U.S. has developed slower than expected in some therapeutic areas and far faster in others compared to the European market, which began the introduction of biosimilars a decade earlier.