Health care reform is once again at the center of national debate, and AEI scholars continue to inform that debate through an ambitious program of publications, conferences, and consultations with political and industry leaders.

This collection of essays provides an indication of the range and depth of AEI’s work in health care reform and pharmaceutical policy. AEI has analyzed issues and concerns critical to the future of America’s health system, spanning subjects as varied as Medicare and Medicaid reform, health coverage for the uninsured, the role of the FDA, the effects of price controls on pharmaceutical R&D, drug reimportation, global health and drug provision, and the role of private sector solutions to public health problems.

AEI’s Health Policy Studies program is one of the most active centers at AEI, providing the intellectual and practical underpinnings for current health care debates.

A flurry of activity forty years ago laid the foundations for AEI’s health policy program as we know it today. In the early 1970s, AEI scholars did pioneering work on pharmaceutical reform. In 1974, Sam Peltzman wrote an AEI Evaluative Study titled Regulation of Pharmaceutical Innovation: The 1962 Amendments in which he argued that more aggressive regulation had doubled the costs of developing and bringing a new drug to market.

The authors analyzed whether the current U.S. regulatory system met the needs for development of new drugs, an area of inquiry that continues to occupy AEI scholars today.

In 1978, Robert Helms wrote an essay about reining in the cost of health care, a subject he and other AEI scholars continue to study. An AEI conference volume from 30 years ago, National Health Insurance: What Now, What Later, What Never?, contributed to the ongoing debate on comprehensive health care reform and reminds us of the durability of Washington’s policy preoccupations. Also in 1978, in a prescient discussion, Leon Kass, M.D., examined the ethical dilemmas of in vitro fertilization.

As the health care debate heated up in the 1990s with the advance of the Clinton health reform, AEI scholars responded with a series of monographs analyzing various proposals and advancing new insights into the challenges of making health coverage available to the uninsured.

An AEI study, Responsible National Health Insurance by Mark Pauly and colleagues, demonstrated that universal health insurance could be achieved but only if government regulation and tax policy were reshaped. The issues addressed in the studies published by AEI during the 1990s remain at the core of today’s efforts to reform the health system.

The essays in this collection have been published in the past several years and represent some of the best of AEI’s current work on current debates in health care and pharmaceutical reform. The collection underscores AEI’s commitment to advancing these debates in a serious, constructive, and timely manner.

Visit Uncle Sam, M.D.: AEI Scholars on Health Care and Pharmaceutical Reform Download Page

You can download Uncle Sam, M.D.: AEI Scholars on Health Care and Pharmaceutical Reform in PDF format.

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER I: COMPREHENSIVE HEALTH CARE REFORM 3
Three Roadblocks on the Road to Health Reform
Robert B. Helms 4
Lessons from the Clinton Plan: Incremental Market Reform,
Not Sweeping Government Control Joseph R. Antos 7
Symptomatic Relief, but No Cure—The Obama Health Care Reform
Joseph R. Antos 12
Beyond Those Health Care Numbers
N. Gregory Mankiw 14
Making a Difference in Differences for the Health Inequalities of Individuals
Thomas P. Miller 16
CHAPTER II: COVERING THE UNINSURED 19
Living without Health Insurance: Why Every American
Needs Coverage Joseph R. Antos 20
Covering the Uninsured—Springing a Leak in the
“Cost Shifting Hydraulic” Thomas P. Miller 25
What DO We Know about the Uninsured?
Thomas P. Miller 28
CHAPTER III: LESSONS FROM MEDICARE AND MEDICAID 33
Have Health Reformers Forgotten Medicare?
Joseph R. Antos 34
Hitting the Snooze Button on Our Medicare Fiscal Alarm Clocks
Thomas P. Miller 39
State Fiscal Relief: Protecting Health Coverage in an Economic
Downturn Robert B. Helms 42
What Medicaid Tells Us about Government Health Care
Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 47
CHAPTER IV: DETERMINING VALUE IN PHARMACEUTICALS 49
How Obama Would Stifle Drug Innovation
Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 50
Stop the War on Drugs
Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 52
More Drugs for More Developing World Diseases
Roger Bate and Karen Porter 54
Congress Wants to Restrict Drug Access
Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 63
Promoting and Using Comparative Research: What Are the Promises
and Pitfalls of a New Federal Effort? Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 64
When Patents Are Not Enough: Data Exclusivity for Follow-On Biologics
John E. Calfee 73
Facing Reality on Follow-On Biologics
John E. Calfee 78
CHAPTER V: SAFETY AND RISK MANAGEMENT 83
Uncle Sam, M.D.
Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 84
Drug Safety Proposals and the Intrusion of Federal Regulation into
Patient Freedom and Medical Practice Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 86
Restoring FDA’s Ability to Keep America’s Families Safe
Roger Bate and Richard Tren 96
The Deadly World of Fake Drugs
Roger Bate 103
CHAPTER VI: THE FDA AND REFORM 109
Reform without Reason: What’s Wrong with the FDA Amendments Act of 2007
John E. Calfee 110
Is the Food and Drug Administration Safe and Effective?
Tomas J. Philipson and Eric Sun 119
FDA Preemption and Patient Welfare in Wyeth v. Levine
John E. Calfee 132
The Supreme Court’s Wyeth Blunder
John E. Calfee 140
Abuse of Medical System by Lawyers Hurts Patients
Roger Bate 143
Stem Cells and the Truth about Medical Innovation
Scott Gottlieb, M.D. 145
ABOUT THE AUTHORS 147

Comments (0)

Name

Email

Comment

smaller | bigger

Add Comment