Category Archives: Health Care
Cigarette taxes revenues and elasticity of demand
A few weeks ago the Nicholls Worth ran this article about Jindal’s plan to change the structure of taxation in Louisiana, moving away from income taxes and toward sales taxes. More recently, more details of the governor’s tax proposals have been released, as we see in this article from the Baton Rouge Advocate. In particular, [...]
Tax rates, budget problems and the exodus of the rich
Without a doubt, the federal budget is in awful shape. For every dollar of federal spending, we are only taking in 60 cents of taxes, meaning that another 40 cents on the dollar is deficit spending, which must be borrowed, some from Americans and some from the Chinese. We know we cannot borrow much from [...]
Protecting consumers from life-saving drugs
Recently, I posted a short blog article: Shortages of life-saving drugs but not of illegal recreational drugs? A House oversight committee has issued a report about the causes of these continued shortages. While my explanation of the shortages being due to the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) is a critical part of the explanation, another explanation [...]
Speculators aren’t the bad guys in the oil market
Today, President Obama offered up a legislative approach to dealing with high oil prices that he blames on speculators. Here is a story from NECN.com (New England Cable News) on Obama’s suggested approach. Ed Rogers at the Washington Post has this comment on Obama’s “let’s do something, anything” about high oil prices by handcuffing speculators, calling [...]
The deadweight of monopoly: A vivid illustration
Read this article from Monday’s (4-2-12) New York Times section on Money and Policy, “White House and the F.D.A. Often at Odds,” by Gardiner Harris. When reading this article, two important points are made that concern monopoly: 1) The regulations of government agencies, such as the FDA, even when well meaning, can result in barriers [...]
Not just street vending, but entry barriers keep the poor out of the braiding and taxi businesses
A few days ago I posted this comment on how local governments protect existing businesses from competition by erecting barriers to entry through occupational licensing. That story reminded me of another story along similar lines, about a pair of Washington, D.C. entrepreneurs, Taalib-Din Uqdah and Pamela Ferrell who started their small business, Cornrows & Co. in 1980, [...]
More on political donors and special favors
Well, just like the line of Cain’s accusers, these stories of special favors for political donors seem to have no end. In this story, it seems that the White House has once again given out about a half billion dollars of taxpayer money to a political donor to provide a product that we can get [...]
Drug shortages and price controls
In case you haven’t noticed in the news these last several months, there are many life-saving and life-extending drugs in very short supply, here is a rather informative article on the issue from The Atlantic, originally from TheDoctorWillSeeYou.com, that should provide some background. Normally, markets have a self-correcting mechanism for dealing with shortage and surplus [...]
There’s an app for that
In any basic microeconomics class, the role of information, especially about prices for competing goods, is discussed. In this article from NBC33 News, a Baton Rouge plastic surgeon, Dr. Jonathon Kaplan, has created a smart phone app for patients to search through the prices for local medical procedures. By better informing patients about alternative sources and [...]
The Public Sector is Poorly Suited to Developing New Drugs
This past Tuesday, President Obama delivered the annual “State of the Union” message . His theme was “Winning the Future.” He correctly noted that a major component of winning the future is investment in research and development, the production of new technologies, new ways of doing things. President Obama noted: “The first step in winning [...]