Dr. David Gratzer
Dr. David Gratzer is a Manhattan Institute Center for Medical Progress Senior Fellow, physician, and writer. Gratzer's research interests include Medicare and Medicaid, drug importation, drug price controls and FDA reform.
• Medical Reform
• Prescription Drug Policy
• Covering the Uninsured
Paul Howard
Paul Howard is a Senior Fellow and the Director of the Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress. Howard's research interests include FDA reform, Medicare and Medicaid policy initiatives, drug importation, and drug price controls.
• FDA Regulation
• Medical Innovation
• Consumer Driven Health Care
Dr. Thomas P. Stossel
Dr. Thomas P. Stossel is a Manhattan Institute Center for Medical Progress Senior Fellow. Stossel's research focuses on the role of public and private partnerships in advancing medical innovation.
• Consumer Driven Health Care
• Pharmaceutical Industry
• Medical Innovation
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Douglas Holtz-Eakin is a Manhattan Institute Center for Medical Progress fellow. He writes on healthcare reform, Medicare and Medicaid, and health insurance.
• Healthcare Reform
• Medicare/Medicaid
• Health Insurance
For more information on the Center for Medical Progress, please contact Hannah Martone, (212) 599-7000, fax (212) 599-3494.
 
Center for Medical Progress.

The Center for Medical Progress is dedicated to articulating the importance of medical progress and the connection between free-market institutions and making medical progress both possible and widely available throughout the world. We encourage the development of market-based policy alternatives to sustain medical progress and promote medical innovation. The Center for Medical Progress also publishes www.MedicalProgressToday.com, a web magazine devoted to chronicling the connections among private sector investment, biomedical innovation, market friendly public policies, and medical progress.

The Center for Medical Progress produces a variety of publications and hosts regular forums on issues of concern to medical progress and health care policy. For more information, please contact CMP director Paul Howard at communications@manhattan-institute.org.

ISSUE AREAS:

Medicare/Medicaid
Articles | Events
Consumer Driven Health Care
Articles | Events
FDA Reform
Articles | Reports | Events
Drug Importation/Price Controls
Articles | Reports

Medicare/Medicaid

Medicare and Medicaid are the nation's two largest entitlement programs. They are also facing multi-trillion dollar deficits in coming decades as expenditures dwarf tax revenues. While some have advocated that the U.S. adopt a Canadian-style "single-payer" health care system to reign in costs, the Manhattan Institute recognizes that price controls and rationing will only exacerbate the health care challenges facing our nation, not solve them. Reforming these programs means opening Medicare and Medicaid to private insurance markets and putting consumers, not bureaucrats, in control of their own health care spending through health savings accounts and targeted vouchers. Empowered consumers make rational, cost-effective choices without dampening the market incentives driving health care innovation.

Select Articles about Medicare/Medicaid:

Select Reports about Medicare/Medicaid:

Select Events about Medicare/Medicaid:

  • Comparing Public and Private Health Insurance: Would a Single-Payer System Save Enough to Cover the Uninsured?, October 17, 2007, New York City

    Speaker: Benjamin Zycher, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research
    Discussant: June O'Neill, Wollman Distinguished Professor of Economics and Finance, Baruch College, Director, Congressional Budget Office (1995-1999)
    Moderator: Howard Husock, Vice President of Programs, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research

Consumer Driven Health Care

Third-party payment plans allow some consumers to use services without ever paying the full cost of health care utilization, while others pay for benefits they don't need. The result is a system where health care costs spiral out of control and consumer choice is limited to "one-size-fits-all" medicine. The CMP wants to change this system by making it a true market: putting consumers in charge of their own routine health care spending; reserving insurance for truly catastrophic injuries; and creating a national market for health insurance that encourages customized insurance plans and pricing competition.

Select Articles about Consumer Driven Health Care:

Select Reports about Consumer Driven Health Care:

Select Events on Consumer Driven Health Care:

  • Reforming Our Health Care System, November 1, 2007, New York City

    Speakers: Richard A. Epstein, J.D. Visiting Scholar, Manhattan Institute's Center for Legal Policy James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law, University of Chicago Peter and Kirstin Bedford Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution, Theodore R. Marmor, Ph.D. Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Management, Yale School of Management Adjunct Professor Emeritus, Yale Law School


  • Who Killed Health Care? America's $2 Trillion Problem—and the Consumer-Driven Cure, June 5, 2007, New York City

    Speaker: Regina E. Herzlinger, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute


  • Health Care: Does the Free Market Apply?, February 15, 2007, New York City

    Participants: Dr. David Gratzer, Senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute Center for Medical Progress, Daniel Callahan, Senior fellow at the Hastings Center
    Moderator: Brian Lehrer, Host of WNYC's "The Brian Lehrer Show" (Click here for video)

FDA Reform and Medical Innovation

The discovery of rare side effects from drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex has politicians and the media clamoring for larger, longer, and more expensive clinical trials by the Food and Drug Administration. But there is no evidence that reliance on additional "one-size-fits-all" clinical trials will make prescription drugs safer. Moreover, it will cost more lives due to slowed access to new medicines. The CMP's prescription for reform is more science, not more regulation. Science-driven FDA reform can help improve drug safety, streamline drug development and accelerate the adoption of personalized medicine. To achieve these goals, the Manhattan Institute has formed a 21st Century FDA Task Force composed of leading experts that will develop a platform for FDA reform that will help the agency meet health care challenges in the 21st century using cutting-edge science and market-friendly policies.

Select Articles about FDA Reform and Medical Innovation:

Select Reports about FDA Reform and Medical Innovation:

Select Events about FDA Reform and Medical Innovation:

  • "The FDA and PDFUA: Timely Review or Unsafe Approval?", June 23, 2008, Capitol Hill, Washington, DC
    Speakers: Tomas Philipson, University of Chicago, and Theresa Mullin, Food and Drug Administration
    Moderator: Paul Howard, Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress
  • New York's Uninsured: Looking Back and Moving Forward, December 11, 2007, New York City

    Panel One: New York's Uninsured: A History of Good Intentions and Unintended Consequences
    James R. Tallon, Jr., President, United Hospital Fund of New York, Mark Scherzer, Legislative Counsel, New Yorkers for Accessible Health Coverage, Tarren Bragdon, Health Policy Analyst, Empire Center for New York State Policy
    Moderator: Howard Husock, Vice President, Policy Research, Manhattan Institute

    Panel Two: Public Sector Experiments: Mandates, Medicaid, and Markets
    Nina Owcharenko, Senior Policy Analyst, Center for Health Policy Studies, Heritage Foundation, Jon Kingsdale, Ph.D., Executive Director, Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, Len Nichols, Ph.D., Director, Health Policy Program, New America Foundation, David Gratzer, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress
    Moderator: Paul Howard, Director, Manhattan Institute's Center for Medical Progress

    Keynote Address: Charles D. Baker, Chief Executive Officer, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

Drug Importation/Price Controls

The U.S. is the world's leader in biopharmaceutical innovation, mainly because the U.S. does not impose price controls on prescription drugs. However, the rise of the internet has given individual U.S. consumers access to drugs in price controlled countries, leading to a growing demand that policymakers legalize importation on a national level. This policy would undermine medical innovation, while sending pharmaceutical investment and innovation now conducted in the U.S. to our rapidly developing competitors in China and India. The CMP is devoted to cataloguing the benefits of market driven medical innovation, both in economic and human terms, and in shifting the debate on drug importation to a question of free trade. After all, since the entire world benefits from the premium U.S. consumers pay for drug research and development, U.S. trade negotiators should encourage rich nations to help bear the full costs of drug development.

Select Articles about Drug Importation/Price Controls:

Select Reports about Drug Importation/Price Controls:
Medical Progress Today.
In the Spotlight:
Bending the Health-Care Cost Curve—Upward
by Paul Howard
November 18, 2009

The Manhattan Institute released a new report coauthored by Frank Lichtenberg, Columbia University economist, and Gautier Duflos, University of Paris I, Sorbonne economist. The report examines the impact of the expiration of drug patents on U.S. drug prices, marketing, and the quantity of drugs consumed.
FROM THE WEB
New Manhattan Institute report on drug patents, WallStreetJournal.com, 10-28-09 (This is linked on DrugPolicyCentral.com and was originally posted on PointofLaw.com, 10-28-09)
PODCAST
Listen to Paul Howard interview Frank Lichtenberg about his new report
 

TESTIMONY:
On Wednesday, June 24, 2009, David Gratzer, senior fellow at the Center for Medical Progress, appeared before the Ways and Means Committee to testify about his experiences with the Canadian single-payer healthcare system.
Click here to read his statement.


NEW BROADSIDE!
Today, November 10, 2009, Manhattan Institute senior fellow David Gratzer's new broadside, Why Obama's Government Takeover of Health-Care Will Be a Disaster (Encounter Books, November 2009) has been officially released.

Dr. Gratzer shows why socialized medicine will make America sick and by examining the realities of existing health care in this country, he reveals how basic free market reforms can revive the private system we already have, without ruining the patient/doctor relationship, stifling scientific advances, and further devastating our economy. Order your copy here.
EXCERPT
. . .World War II Veteran Jack Tagg is losing vision in his right eye. He suffers from macular degeneration, a progressive illness that causes blindness. A drug could slow the deterioration, but the government refuses to pay for it. Why? He's not blind enough. With his left eye spared so far, a government panel has denied funding the pharmaceutical even though his doctor feels it's needed. . .
PODCAST
David Gratzer, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, talks to Paul Howard, director of the Center for Medical Progress, about his new broadside.

Project FDA.


CMP REPORTS
Healthier Choice: An Examination of Market-Based Reforms for New York’s Uninsured Healthier Choice: An Examination of Market-Based Reforms for New York’s Uninsured
By Stephen T. Parente and Tarren Bragdon
September 10, 2009
Forging a New Plan For Healthcare: Principles and Priorities for Sustainable Reform. Forging a New Plan For Healthcare: Principles and Priorities for Sustainable Reform
By Douglas Holtz-Eakin
May 18, 2009
HSA Health-Insurance Plans After Four Years: What Have We Learned? HSA Health-Insurance Plans After Four Years: What Have We Learned?
By Benjamin Zycher
February 2009
From the Broad Brush to the Fine Point: How to Enable Personalized Medicine. From the Broad Brush to the Fine Point: How to Enable Personalized Medicine
By Sidney Taurel
December 2008
Alive and Working: How Access to New Drugs has Slowed the Growth in America's Disability Rates. Alive and Working: How Access to New Drugs has Slowed the Growth in America's Disability Rates
By Frank R. Lichtenberg
October 2008
Bridging the Gap: Affordable Health Care for New York's Uninsured. Bridging the Gap: Affordable Health Care for New York's Uninsured
Transcript
Medical Progress Report 6. The Truth About Drug Innovation: Thirty-Five Summary Case Histories on Private Sector Contributions to Pharmaceutical Science
By Benjamin Zycher, Joseph A. DiMasi and Christopher-Paul Milne, June 2008

Rx NY: A Prescription for More Accessible Health Care in NY
By Tarren Bragdon

Comparing Public and Private Health Insurance: Would A Single-Payer System Save Enough to Cover the Uninsured?
By Benjamin Zycher
 
Click here for more CMP reports

CMP BOOKS
THE CURE: Now In Paperback!

The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American CareManhattan Institute senior fellow Dr. David Gratzer's acclaimed book, The Cure: How Capitalism Can Save American Care, is now available in paperback with the original foreword by Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman and with a new introduction by the author. Click here for details, reviews, and more information.

Who Killed Health Care?

Who Killed Health Care Who Killed Health Care?: America's $2 Trillion Medical Problem—And the Consumer-Driven Cure
Regina Herzlinger
(McGraw-Hill, June 2007)
 

 

  

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