John Goodman’s Commentaries
Goodman on Bidenomics
There are a surprising number of illiberal proposals, including health insurance subsidies, Medicare enrollment for seniors who are wealthy and already insured, two years of free college – subsidizing the single greatest cause of income inequality. “The puzzle in all this is, Why? Why impose a whole slew of new taxes on the rich and then turn around and give them a whole slew of new benefits?”
Health Care Briefing With Newt Gingrich
Former Congresswoman Nan Hayworth, Newt Gingrich and I discuss healthcare in the next election and beyond. Newt has always been an outlier among Republican politicians when it comes to the topic of health care – aggressively searching for solutions instead of avoiding the subject. Watch my virtual briefing on Healthcare & the 2020 Election w/Newt Gingrich.
The FDA is Preventing a Solution to Covid
With paper-strip tests, Americans could test themselves every day in their own homes, at a cost of $1 to $2 per test. The government could even make the tests available for free. Unlike lengthy swabs and finger prick tests (which cause personal discomfort), paper strip testing involves no more than spitting into a tube or the use of a short nasal swab – with results in a few minutes. By contrast, the standard PCR test currently being used costs from $50 to $100 and sometimes more. Results can take more than a week – and that makes them virtually useless. Also, testing tends to be a one-time, irregular event.
Short-Term Insurance Is Not The Problem. It’s The Solution
Democrats in Congress are trying to abolish short-term, limited-benefit insurance, but that insurance is on the rise because people want it. Democrats complain that today’s short-term plans don’t cover services people might need. “What if you get sick and need expensive drugs?” they might ask. The answer is: you drop your short-term plan and enroll in an Obamacare plan.
Why We Weren’t Ready For Covid-19
In Chile, people can work and earn as much as they like, even while receiving social security benefits. In Singapore, Switzerland, the Netherlands and other countries, people don’t lose their private insurance coverage if they quit work or change jobs. In Chile’s unemployment system, people don’t lose income when they go back to work. Chile’s disability system, which allows people to go back to work without losing benefit checks, costs about half as much as disability programs cost in the U.S. and in Europe.
The Five Deadly Sins Of Private Health Insurance
In health care we are not getting the benefits from competition that we receive in markets for other goods and services. The reason for that is unwise government regulation. Under the current system, We don’t allow health plans to specialize in something they are really good at. Say a plan is very good at diabetic care. If we would allow it to restrict its enrollment to diabetics and focus exclusively on their care, it would probably improve even further. Instead, we require health plans to be all things to all enrollees.
New Partnership: Health Care News
Because of budget shortfalls, the Heartland Institute suspended publication of Health Care News in March. Fortunately, the Goodman Institute for Public Policy has agreed to partner with Heartland to ensure the newspaper’s survival going forward.
Goodman: Has Liberalism Lost Its Mind?
Although liberals often talk about helping the poor and reducing inequality, their most cherished reforms these days would tax the poor and subsidize the rich – making inequality worse than it otherwise would have been. Consider three ideas that are at the top of the mainstream liberal policy agenda: Medicare buy-in for young seniors, free college education and making it easier for workers (especially public employees ) to unionize. It’s hard to think of an agenda that is less progressive in the original meaning of the word.
Goodman on COVID: Deregulation is Saving Lives
Regulations that lock down the economy are killing people. Deregulation is saving them. That’s the theme of several research projects at the GIPPR. It’s also the theme of John Goodman’s latest post at Forbes. Governmental bodies are repealing laws, suspending regulations, and ignoring previous restrictions that impeded the ability of the private sector to act. They are liberating doctors, nurses, drug manufacturers, test makers, makers of personal protective equipment, etc., to do things that were illegal to do only a few months ago.
Study: Liberate Prescription Drugs
The mainstream media had a field day condemning Donald Trump for promoting off-label uses of prescription drugs to treat the coronavirus. So what do you expect to happen when a drug is “proven”? Did you know that “approved” drugs work only half the time? What about “unproven” drugs? Did you know that as many as one in five drugs in use in the United States has been prescribed for an off-label purpose? Roughly one-half of all cancer patients are relying on off-label prescriptions. Much of what doctors know they learn by trial and error – outside of FDA tests.