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A Recipe for A Better World; Nine Parts Innovation, One Part Regulation

June 26, 2019  •  Federalist Society

NEWS

"To protect the environment, our health, and promote the social good we have to live more austere lives."

How often have we heard something along these lines? The problem is, it's not a very effective approach.

Tackling the world's most intractable problems, preserving freedoms and making life better for everyone requires something often overlooked by many who are sincerely interested in making the world better. If advocates for austere living promote bleeding heart liberalism, I believe we should stand for bleeding heart market advocacy.

For a better world, we need more innovation.

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Frivolous Lawsuits Against Scientific Innovation Are Just Another Form Of Socialism
Unjustified and outsized verdicts harm society by discouraging investment in innovative products, yet they're becoming startlingly common.

June 18, 2019  •  The Federalist

Only 51 percent of Americans think socialism would be a bad thing for the country, according to a Gallup poll released in May. Although the 2020 election will be a big test for whether socialism gains a foothold, freedom-lovers should be worried more broadly than at the polls.

The slide towards socialism is taking root not only at the ballot box, but also from the jury box. Plaintiffs' lawyers are having wild success in their campaign to redistribute wealth from innovative companies to sympathetic clients—all while taking a healthy cut for themselves, of course.

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Acknowledging The Good In the Bad
Rays of Hope In Washington State

April 12, 2019

Excise taxes, or sin taxes are bad ideas for many reasons. We never support them, no matter how "bad" the "sin" legislators seek to tax.

Sin taxes are meant not only to raise money — usually for some usually un-opposable cause — but to influence consumer behavior. They are designed to artificially increase what consumers pay, with the goal of reducing (legal) sales of the disfavored products.

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Lower Drug Prices Without Harming Innovation

April 11, 2019  •  Real Clear Health

The urgent need to lower drug prices s has become a rare consensus issue in Washington.

But how to achieve this goal is another story.

Now, Congress has an opportunity to make a smart fix to something it inadvertently broke.

Like medications themselves, policy initiatives can remedy real problems. But they always come with the risk of harmful unintended side effects. So policy-makers, like doctors, should always be weighing potential benefits and risks.

The use of generic drugs, copies of innovative pharmaceuticals, are a prime example. By introducing competition they can drive down the price patients and other payers shell out for medicines.

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Cuomo's Out of Control Craving for an Opioid Slush Fund

March 21, 2019  •  RealClear Policy

Sometimes a bad idea is a bad idea, no matter how you package it. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is trying again, after his $600 million opioid tax was slapped down in December by an Obama appointed federal judge.

Proponents of the earlier tax scheme pointed to a key provision which forbade manufacturers from passing along the cost to patients. This was an essential element of the plan  — who in their right mind would want to punish patients whose doctors legitimately prescribe opioids for acute pain?

Even supporters of sin-taxes recognize the folly of squeezing vulnerable patients to pay for an opioid crisis now fueled by the illegal fentanyl trade.

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