Rick Santorum believes that the Obama administration is in favor of some Gattaca-like dystopia, I suppose: “One of the things that you don’t know about ObamaCare in one of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing,” Santorum began telling about 400 people here. “Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, [...]

Last week, I wrote a post about how the Left wants in the bedrooms of the people by mandating health insurance coverage for contraceptives. On the other extreme, we have Rick “every sperm is sacred” Santorum talking about the “dangers of contraceptives” and how non-procreative sex is somehow bad for society (as if concerns about [...]

One way we libertarians often describe ourselves are individuals who don’t want the government in our bedroom or our boardrooms. Those on the Left typically agree with the former while disagreeing with the latter while those on the Right typically believe the reverse. Yet when it comes to the federal government mandating that all health [...]

Here’s a follow up to a story I linked back in 2009 concerning the Institute for Justice’s legal challenge to the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 and the act’s applicability to bone marrow transplants. This is very good news for the roughly 3,000 Americans who die every year while waiting to find a bone [...]

From a commenter over at Kevin Drum’s place. The discussion was about problems with the American educational system: Yep. And as the posts by Aaron Carroll and Austin Frakt have shown over the last year (link below) the same is true of our health care system. We’ve gone through a 30+ year binge of hypercapitalism, [...]

Today’s post was written by regular commenter Dr. Gregory Tetrault (aka “Dr. T”). Dr. Tetrault is a clinical pathologist who has directed four different medical laboratories since 1989. He was an Associate Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Tennessee Medical Center until 2009. His plan below is, IMHO, a realistic way [...]

President Obama and his sycophant Keynesian friends in the MSM can’t quite figure out why his policies haven’t improved the economy. Maybe President Obama should listen to an actual job creator, Steve Wynn to get some clue about why businesses aren’t expanding. Here is an excerpt from Wynn from a recent conference call where he [...]

Ezra Klein has a rather thought-provoking post today about human genome sequencing and its ability to allow doctors to better-tailor treatment to the specific needs of an individual patient. It presents a phenomenal opportunity to both make medicine more effective, and IMHO to make it cheaper by spending less time and energy on substandard treatments. [...]

Ezra Klein, on education & health care costs: I’m not going to end this post with some wan paragraph explaining how to transform these two industries into something closer to their potential. My ideas on health-care reform are available elsewhere on the blog and I don’t know enough about education to say anything worthwhile. But [...]

Former New Mexico Gov. Gary “Veto” Johnson made a recent appearance on Hannity last week (see video below). I have to say I was pleasantly surprised both with how Sean Hannity conducted the interview and how Gov. Johnson responded. I haven’t really watched Hannity since before the “& Colmes” was dropped a few years ago; [...]

In making the case for open and obvious centralized rationing, advocates claim that “we” must ration with “our” eyes open. From Beth Haynes at PJM: That’s why Medicare needs the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Setting a cap on spending is the first step of rationing. The next is deciding who gets what medical care. “Limited [...]

In 2008, a U.S. senator made a very good point in arguing against government mandates for individuals to purchase health insurance: “[I]f a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.” Who was the senator who said this? Answer below the fold.

Was 2010 a good year or bad year for liberty and why? Like most of you will likely respond, 2010 was very much a mixed bag IMHO. On the positive side, the mandate section of ObamaCare was found unconstitutional, the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy was repealed, Wikileaks exposed the federal government for the [...]

The latest revelation from Wikileaks shows that Michael Moore may have been a bit too good at making agitprop even for Cuban authorities to handle: US diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show that the government of Cuba banned Michael Moore’s 2007 documentary, Sicko, “because it painted such a ‘mythically’ favourable picture of Cuba’s healthcare system [...]

For some time, we’ve been using words and sometimes charts or graphs to describe the multitude of problems with government-run health care systems. The Greeks have finally allowed us to put a face to the issue. Well, perhaps a few extremities lower. From the Daily Caller: This Saturday, one of Greece’s most respected newspapers, To [...]

I had a really interesting philosophical discussion with Brad Warbiany, our curator at The Liberty Papers, over a Facebook status I wrote. I had just re-listened to the CBS Radio Workshop rendition of Brave New World and had commented that it seemed like a far more livable situation than 1984. Warbiany added that California, if [...]

Obama on Saturday: “We’ve made Medicare more solvent by going after waste, fraud, and abuse – not by changing seniors’ guaranteed benefits” Really? And how aggressively have you been “going after” them? It took private sleuths hired by Medicare an average of six months last year to refer fraud cases to law enforcement. According to [...]

A few months ago, when Pelosi crowed about the immediate effects of Obamacare, I pointed out a long list of them and my responses. My thoughts: 6. NO DISCRIMINATON AGAINST CHILDREN WITH PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS—Prohibits health plans from denying coverage to children with pre-existing conditions. Effective 6 months after enactment. (Beginning in 2014, this prohibition would [...]

While most of us were in the middle of a slow week following a holiday, Obama decided to issue a recess appointment for the job heading Medicare & Medicaid. Could it be that he issued it as a recess appointment because he didn’t want us digging too deeply into what the good Dr said? Below [...]

The journalist responsible for the original uproar about the MMR vaccine and autism has been shown to have produced very shoddy research, and widely discredited. He was even recently banned from the practice of medicine in the UK. This has, of course, not quieted the debate. In fact, it’s gotten even worse, with his vaccine [...]