In our weekly Q&A, Nancy Vu interviews @cato.org's director of health policy studies @mfcannon.bsky.social on why he opposes the ACA and the enhanced premium tax credits at the center of the government shutdown. (unlocked)

Welcome to U.S. health care, where government drives such hard bargains with Big Pharma, their stock prices surge. www.washingtonpost.c...

“Voluntary agreement…provides certainty from tariffs.” Blink twice if you need rescuing, Mr. @AlbertBourla. “comparable drug prices to…other developed countries” 🤔 “Specific terms of the agreement remain confidential.” 🤔

🚨🚨NEW PAPER🚨🚨 States that block competent RNs from doing sexual assault forensic exams take a lax posture toward physician sexual misconduct. A form of regulation that ignores, minimizes, and facilitates sexual assault is the wrong tool for protecting rape victims. www.cato.org/policy-...

He’s running.

🚨🚨NEW PAPER🚨🚨 Regulation is blocking care for rape victims by preventing competent nurses from performing sexual assault forensic exams. Meanwhile, regulators knowingly reinstate licenses of doctors who sexually assault patients, some of whom go on to assault more patients.

From @TND & Cory Smith re @DeptVetAffairs/@VeteransHealth.

Reading @CMSgov SMD #25-003 makes me wonder. Why can't Republicans show this level of zeal for cutting deficit, unconstitutional, Medicare, military, or Obamacare spending? Why are they only able to cut government spending on immigrants? www.medicaid.gov/fed...

The U.S. health sector is not a free market. @RealDonaldTrump’s thuggish behavior toward pharmaceutical companies illustrates that the U.S. government sets health care prices so often, presidents have come to see doing so as their right.

I put the Trump Rx and MFN ideas in different categories. Trump Rx is a garden-variety, within-normal-parameters bad idea. If it provides value, the private sector will do it. If it doesn’t provide value, the government should not subsidize it.

Government efficiency on display at the VA. www.benefits.va.gov/... www.vaoig.gov/sites/... www.militarytimes.co...

“Congress has been bribing higher-income Americans to purchase expensive ObamaCare plans by hiding the plans’ true price tags using taxpayer dollars…A family of four in AZ making $600K, a married couple in WV making $580K, and a single individual in VT making $180K all qualify.”

"fresh money"

Justice Kavanaugh: “If the person is a U. S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, that individual will be free to go after the brief encounter.”

Decade after decade, Democrats complain that the U.S. health sector is uniquely expensive, inefficient, and rife with waste. But when someone proposes that Medicaid should grow at 3% annually instead of 4.5%, suddenly Democrats act like everyone will die.

How I learned to stop worrying and love rural hospital closures.

People who support Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, health insurance mandates, tax preferences, FDA regulation, dispensing regulation, reimportation bans, or patents when they see Trump use tariffs to increase drug prices. www.nationalaffairs....

The purpose of Medicaid's matching-grant system of federal funding is to encourage states to expand their programs to politically unpopular levels.

You’re reacting to Trump‘s 100% tariff on pharmaceuticals as if government increasing drug prices is new. It’s not. www.nationalaffairs....

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In a free market, government would control 0% of health spending. - In the average OECD nation, it controls 75% - In the United States, 84% - In Cuba, 89% The United States is closer to Cuba, and farther from a free market, than the average OECD nation.

I'm huge in Slovakia.

Blue states are learning it can be better if public health doesn't come from the feds. I explain @CambUP_PHILNYUK's Social Philosophy & Policy that subsidiarity is a crucial part of optimal public health: "A key criterion of a violence-minimization framework is subsidiarity.

"The Star-Spangled Banner is really just a song about a shootout between us and the police." - ICE T (@FINALLEVEL)

In my latest piece, in @nytimes.com, I write about my surprisingly positive experience as a liberal advisor to the Turning Point USA chapter at my university. #TPUSA

"The whole program needs to be killed." instapundit.com/746901/ @brian_blase

“It is a heavily regulated industry. That's for sure. But it's been very difficult for policy makers to come up with new solutions for primary care.” In place of “But,” maybe consider: “As a direct and predictable consequence…” podcasts.apple.com/u... @julierovner.bsky.social

Government licensing of clinicians adds practically nothing to the quality protections that would remain after deregulation, which include market certifications and the tort system.

President Trump wants to reduce some of Medicare’s excessive prices. It may be a fool’s errand. So long as government keeps setting the prices, Trump is more likely to increase prices where they are lower than to lower them where they are higher.

Yikes, New Mexico. errorsofenchantment.... @riograndefndn

There is simply no excuse for perpetuating the myth that U.S. health-care prices are market prices, or that the U.S. health sector is a free market.

German residents have the freedom to purchase affordable, secure, lifelong health insurance at actuarially fair rates. U.S. territories somehow manage without Obamacare's costliest health-insurance regulations.

The health care debate is between people who know that making health care universal requires free markets, and those who cannot recognize government failure even when they are drowning in it.

Lavish taxpayer subsidies appear to be the only thing preventing Obamacare's health-insurance Exchanges from imploding.

As the maxim goes, hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue. In this case, risk adjustment is the homage market opponents pay to market prices.

Where patients became more price sensitive when purchasing certain health-care services, prices for those services fell quickly and dramatically — without anyone losing access to care.

The reason risk-adjustment attempts to mimic free markets is significant: It is because market prices minimize incentives for insurers to avoid and/or shortchange the sick.

Risk adjustment works no better than other forms of government price-setting. Even with risk adjustment, government still gets the prices wrong.

Government price-setting not only raises prices in government programs, it also pushes private prices higher. Indeed, excessive private-sector prices are due in no small part to government subsidies and price-setting.

I could’ve sworn my children told me there’s no such thing as gaslighting. But they assure me they did not.

One 2006 study estimated that Medicaid's drug-pricing rules increased private-sector prices by 15%. The way Medicare sets prices for physician-administered drugs creates the same incentives.

As if traditional Medicare's prices weren't excessive enough, the prices Congress sets for "private" Medicare Advantage (MA) plans leave taxpayers paying an average of 20% more every time an enrollee switches from traditional Medicare to MA.

That Medicare prices can simultaneously be about 60% lower than private-sector prices yet still be excessive testifies to how wildly government increases health-care prices.

Medicare's pricing errors often exhibit greater longevity than Medicare enrollees.

When it comes to government control of health spending, the United States (84%) is closer to communist Cuba (89%) than the average OECD nation (75%).

The proliferation of physician-owned specialty hospitals is due largely to entrepreneurial physicians trying to capture the excessive prices Medicare conjures and pays for many procedures.