Hundreds of thousands of displaced Gulf Coast residents are finding themselves in a health-insurance crisis. While those injured, sick, or chronically in need of health-care services are finally gaining access to emergency medical services at shelters or in the towns and cities to which they have been evacuated, their ability to continue getting needed care […]
Barbara Dreyfuss
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Patents Pending
Unless the drug industry starts to negotiate significantly lower prices, it may find itself battling debt-strapped states for control over the manufacture of drugs. States already take land and other property in order to benefit the public by building things such as roads and schools. Now some legislators and officials are saying they should be […]
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A Dirty Job
After creating record federal budget deficits by giving tax cuts to the wealthy and financing the war in Iraq, the Bush administration’s budget proposal in February is widely expected to try to shrink deficits largely by slashing programs for the poor and the elderly, particularly Medicaid. Capitol Hill is expecting the administration’s fiscal 2006 budget […]
Posted inFeatures
Almost Heaven?
In April 2004, several members of the West Virginia House of Delegates flew to Minnesota to speak at a national meeting of the Council of State Governments. The legislators were eager for support from other states to bolster their ongoing effort to force drug companies to lower prices. Specifically, the West Virginia delegation wanted the […]
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The Illness Department
Lost in the frenzied discussion about who is winning the lottery for a flu shot and how much price gouging is going on for the remaining vials is the question of how much George W. Bush’s politicization of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) played in creating this crisis. Over the past four years, the […]
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Cheap Trick
Back in 1996, Terry Johnson, the human-resources director for Ada County, Idaho, was excited about his new health-care coverage. He had just helped the county become the first in the United States to offer employees a medical savings account (MSA) as an alternative to traditional indemnity health insurance, and he was eager to try it. […]
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The Seduction
Last July, as the debate over a Medicare prescription-drug bill heated up, AARP, the nation’s largest senior-citizen lobbying organization with some 35 million members, sent a letter to Congress detailing issues that “must be fixed” before it could endorse a final bill. Among the group’s chief concerns were “program structure and the adequacy and affordability […]
