Thursday Links
- The populists have it wrong. Why free trade and globalization are great blessings to Americans and poor families around the world.
- How Obama’s plan for health care will affect medical innovation in America: “Imposing price controls on drugs and treatments–or indirectly forcing their prices down by means of a ‘public option’ or expanded public insurance programs–would reduce the incentive for innovators to develop new treatments.”
- Register now for the upcoming Cato forum featuring author Tim Carney and his new book, Obamanomics: How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting You and Enriching His Wall Street Friends, Corporate Lobbyists, and Union Bosses. Buy the book, here.
- Podcast: “Shoes, Undies and Airplane Security” featuring Jim Harper.
ObamaCare Threatens Innovation
That’s the conclusion of economist Glen Whitman and physician Raymond Raad, who write in Forbes:
Unfortunately, the health care bills moving through Congress could curtail medical innovation. Imposing price controls on drugs and treatments–or indirectly forcing their prices down by means of a “public option” or expanded public insurance programs–would reduce the incentive for innovators to develop new treatments.
Proposed reforms could also retard business model innovation–an area where innovation is weak. Congress has already used its control of Medicare to limit the growth of specialty hospitals. A nationally mandated insurance package would severely curtail innovation in payment methods and insurance products, which have the potential to improve the coordination and delivery of health care services.
The health care debate should address more than just covering the uninsured and controlling costs. When the U.S. generates medical innovations, the whole world benefits. That is a virtue of the American system that is not reflected in comparative life expectancy and mortality statistics.
The op-ed is based on the authors’ Cato Institute policy analysis, “Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation.”
Glen Whitman Discusses Cato Study on Medical Innovation
Reason.tv has put together a great video interview where economist Glen Whitman discusses his recent Cato Institute study, “Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation.”
How would the health care legislation before Congress affect medical innovation? See Reason.tv’s related video: “Would ObamaCare Kill Medical Innovation?“
More to Be Thankful For
In a new study, Glen Whitman and Raymond Raad demonstrate that America leads the world in medical innovations that ease and extend our lives. And in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, Melinda Beck details some of the health care advances that we should give thanks for this Thanksgiving Day:
• Fewer Americans died in traffic fatalities in 2008 than in any year since 1961, and fewer were injured than in any year since 1988, when the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration began collecting injury data. One possible reason: Seat-belt use hit a record high of 84% nationally.
• Life expectancy in the U.S. reached an all-time high of 77.9 years in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available, continuing a long upward trend. (That’s 75.3 years for men and 80.4 years for women.)
• Death rates dropped significantly for eight of the 15 leading causes of death in the U.S., including cancer, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, accidents, diabetes, homicides and pneumonia, from 2006 to 2007. (Of the top 15, only deaths from chronic lower respiratory disease increased significantly.) The overall age-adjusted death rate dropped to a new low of 760.3 deaths per 100,000 people—half of what it was 60 years ago….
• Around the world, 27% fewer children died before their fifth birthday in 2007 than in 1990, due to greater use of insecticide-treated mosquito nets, better rehydration for diarrhea, and better access to clean water, sanitation and vaccines.…
• Twenty-seven countries reported a reduction of up to 50% in the number of malaria cases between 1990 and 2006.
Read it all. (I should note that Beck attributes more of this good news to government action than I would, and she counts the mere existence of smoking bans as a “health care advance,” despite the lack of evidence that they actually have any health effects. But that’s an argument we can save for next week. Today and tomorrow let’s just celebrate the good news.)
I wrote a couple of years ago about the good news of falling cancer death rates and falling heart disease death rates.
In his book The Improving State of the World, Indur Goklany examined, as the subtitle put it, Why We’re Living Longer, Healthier, More Comfortable Lives on a Cleaner Planet.
Wednesday Links
- Why America leads the world in medical innovation.
- If the health care overhaul bill were a medical product it would have to come with a warning label, which could read something like this: Warning: This product will increase your health insurance premiums, make your children poorer and won’t make you healthier. That’s not all. There’s more.
- Unintended Consequences: Could government efforts to redesign cities to make them more pedestrian friendly, concentrate jobs in selected areas, and increase mass transit actually raise C02 emission levels?
- What does it say about politicians who think Americans who don’t buy health insurance should be subject to a $250,000 fine and/or five years in jail?
- The president is on his first official trip to Asia. Here’s an outline as to how the United States should engage the region.
- Podcast: “Obama’s Credibility on the Dollar“
Will America Keep “Bending the Productivity Curve”?
Most international comparisons conclude that America’s health care sector under-performs those of other advanced nations. Aside from other serious flaws, those studies typically ignore each nation’s contribution to medical innovation — the discovery of new knowledge and practices that improve health in all nations. Today, the Cato Institute releases a new study — the most comprehensive study of its kind — that helps fill that void.
In “Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation,” economist Glen Whitman and physician Raymond Raad conclude that the United States far and away outperforms other nations on medical innovation, but that the legislation moving through Congress threatens America’s ability to innovate. From the executive summary:
To date…none of the most influential international comparisons have examined the contributions of various countries to the many advances that have improved the productivity of medicine over time…
In three of the four general categories of innovation examined in this paper — basic science, diagnostics, and therapeutics — the United States has contributed more than any other country…In the last category, business models, we lack the data to say whether the United States has been more or less innovative than other nations; innovation in this area appears weak across nations.
In general, Americans tend to receive more new treatments and pay more for them — a fact that is usually regarded as a fault of the American system. That interpretation, if not entirely wrong, is at least incomplete. Rapid adoption and extensive use of new treatments and technologies create an incentive to develop those techniques in the first place. When the United States subsidizes medical innovation, the whole world benefits. That is a virtue of the American system that is not reflected in comparative life expectancy and mortality statistics.
Policymakers should consider the impact of reform proposals on innovation. For example, proposals that increase spending on diagnostics and therapeutics could encourage such innovation. Expanding price controls, government health care programs, and health insurance regulation, on the other hand, could hinder America’s ability to innovate.
Raad will discuss the study this Friday at noon at a policy forum at the Cato Institute.
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