Word: free-market
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
There is irony in Republicans' and conservative groups' pushing managed competition as the free-market solution to Medicare, since it is more or less exactly what President Clinton proposed last year as a general health-care reform, which these same voices denounced as "socialized medicine." And their specific objection was precisely that the arrangement would drive people into managed care...
...purposeful discrimination, healthier people will naturally drift toward the cheaper, less elaborate plans, making them cheaper still--not because of greater efficiency but because of what is known as "adverse selection." The consequence? To avoid punishing sick people--simply for being sick--will require far more government regulation than free-market enthusiasts for managed competition care to admit...
Managed competition and managed care are not the only ways to bring free-market discipline into Medicare. In fact, by retaining the basic principle of insurance, they preserve health care as a salad bar where you can eat as much as you want at no extra cost. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, wants to go further: arrange it so that people pay for most normal medical expenses out of their own pockets. Cato would gradually increase Medicare's deductibles and copayments--currently $716 for the first 60 days of a hospital stay, and $100 a year plus...
...that the U.S. is heading toward anything-goes, free-market pharmacology. The FDA will not permit narcotics such as codeine to be sold over the counter. And each of the newly unrestricted drugs--from Aleve for arthritis to Monistat 7 for yeast infections--had to undergo many months and occasionally years of government evaluation before it could be let loose on consumers. Even so, of the 15 top-selling drugs in the $13 billion OTC market, 14 were once prescription only. Future candidates for deregulation include nicotine patches, which help people stop smoking, and cholesterol-lowering drugs...
...fact that America lost a cause draped in the noblest rhetoric but fought on cynical and divisive terms produced a sense of lingering self-doubt that may never vanish. In a significant way, though, the principles for which the war was waged are ascendant today in Vietnam. The free-market spirit of Saigon is what counts, not the Marxist maunderings of some old men in Hanoi. The Vietnamese, who lost many more lives than Americans did along the streets, rivers and paddy fields of a singularly ugly encounter, have put the past behind them. Americans need do no less...