2008 U.S. Index of Health Ownership
PRI Publication
By: John R. Graham
8.19.2008

San Francisco-Americans lack the basic freedom to make their own health care decisions according to the second edition of the U.S. Index of Health Ownership, an annual report by the Pacific Research Institute (PRI). The Index measures the degree to which individuals, be they patients, health professionals, entrepreneurs, or taxpayers, "own" the health care in their states.

Special Features Page

From Heart Transplants to Hairpieces: The Questionable Benefits of State Benefit Mandates for Health Insurance
By: John R. Graham
7.01.2008 

This paper reviews 28 original actuarial and econometric articles that attempt to estimate the cost of benefit mandates, as well as others that summarize the literature on mandates during the last two decades of their development. The results vary widely. No scholar has replicated the experiments of his colleagues, thereby rendering scientific conclusions impossible. The hardy few who have attempted to measure the costs use different (often uncertain) data sources, and run them through different models, often of dizzying complexity.
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California Health Care Deforminator: Model ABX1 1
Healthy California Series
By: John R. Graham
1.23.2008 

Californians entered 2007 hopeful that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders would collaborate to find real solutions to overcome the “root causes” of rapidly increasing health costs, the growing number of uninsured, and the rise in small businesses increasingly unable to provide health benefits. Instead, they got a proposed tax increase.
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U.S. Index of Health Ownership
By John R. Graham
June 2007

Today, almost half of the country’s health-care spending is in the hands of the government, instead of patients themselves. The other half is governed by a bewildering morass of regulations on doctors, insurance companies, and us as patients that nobody can hope to understand. The result: as much as one third-of our health-care spending is wasted. Politicians created this system—the most expensive in the world—and they continue to add more and more layers of government control, usually attempting to fix problems that they created in the first place.

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Curing California Health Care: 5 Steps to Universal Choice in 2007
By: Diana M. Ernst, John R. Graham
January 2007

Governor Schwarzenegger will start his second term with California health reform as his top priority. Hopefully, the Governor will take a fresh turn towards universal choice in health care, which requires breaking free from the inflexible and expensive status quo but does not impose more government power. So far, his policy approach remains unclear.

Questionable Cure for a Questionable Crisis | Factsheet
By: Sally C. Pipes
November 2006

Massachusetts made history in April, 2006, when it passed a law requiring residents to purchase health insurance or face fines beginning in July 2007. The plan was hailed as an innovative way to achieve universal health insurance coverage. It places responsibility on the individual to purchase health insurance, asks employers to subsidize insurance or pay a fee, and puts the government in charge of brokering plans that it promises will be affordable. Taxpayers will provide generous subsidies for those with low incomes.

CA Election 2006: Proposition 86 Voter Pamphlet
Keep Tobacco Money Out of Our Hospitals | Factsheet
October 2006

California hospitals are seduced by the New Tobacco Industry. This industry makes nothing that it sells to those who voluntarily buy. Instead, it feeds off a river of cash, a Leviathan wreathed in smoke rising from the billions
of dollars that the government extracts from the Old Tobacco Industry and its customers every year.

What States Can Do to Reform Health Care: A Free Market Primer
By: John R. Graham, James R. Copland, Roy Cordato, Nina Owcharenko, Brett J. Skinner, Shirley V. Svorny, J.P. Wieske
July 2006


Free-market advocates recognize that the core weakness of American health care lies in government’s intrusion: it significantly weakens the incentives necessary to ensure that health providers put the needs of patients first. Americans experience health systems that are burdened by more rules and regulations every year.

Deadly Solution: SB-840 and the Government Takeover of California Health Care
By: John R. Graham
June 2006

Last year (2005), State Senator Sheila Kuehl (D-Los Angeles) introduced SB-840, the California Health Insurance Reliability Act, which the State Senate has passed and now awaits debate in the Assembly, having passed the Assembly Health Committee in summer 2005. SB-840 imposes a Canadian-style government healthcare monopoly in California.

This briefing paper demonstrates the negative consequences of such a system, and advances consumer-directed health care as an alternative. SB-840 is supported analytically by a report from the Lewin Group, a consulting firm in Virginia.

The High Cost of Low-Priced Drug to California
By Philip J. Romero
January 2006

With the defeat of two competing prescription drug discount proposals in the November 8, 2005 special election, politicians and interest groups who want to lower drug prices are likely to revisit a notion that has already been pursued unsuccessfully by California state legislators: the “parallel trade” of medicines from Canada and other countries with lower-priced prescription drugs.

This study estimates the benefits to Californian patients of acquiring lower-priced prescription drugs from Canada through “parallel trade”, as well as the potential costs to California-based companies and the resulting impact on the California economy.

California’s Uninsured: Crisis, Conundrum or Chronic Condition?
By John R. Graham
January 2006

Biotechnological and Pharmaceutical Research and Development Investment Under a Patent-Based Access and Benefit Sharing Regime
Dr. Benjamin Zycher
May 2005

The forthcoming Access and Benefit-Sharing (ABS) provisions of the Convention on Biodiversity carry significant potential implications for the future of biotechnological and pharmaceutical research and development investment, and thus for the evolution of preventative and therapeutic medicine, that is, for the future alleviation of human suffering.

If implemented in a system of contractual arrangements, ABS would secure for the owners of flora, fauna, and traditional knowledge clearer and more certain ownership of intellectual and physical property without the severe valuation and other biases inherent in a patent-based system. A patent-based ABS system on the other hand would be equivalent analytically to a long-run tax on biotechnological and pharmaceutical research and development investment. Accordingly, it would have the effect of reducing such investment and thus the worldwide biotechnological and pharmaceutical capital stock over time.

A Lethal Guardian: The Canadian Government's Ban on Prescription Drugs
By John R. Graham for the Fraser Institute
April 2005

When any new drug is invented and ready for distribution in Canada, the Canadian government responds by enforcing an automatic ban on its use. This ban is removed for patients who need the drug immediately only under extraordinary circumstances. The general ban is only lifted after the manufacturer has paid a user fee and waited for Health Canada to undertake a lengthy review to certify the safety and efficacy of the medicine. This ban is harmful to Canadians’ health and is implicated in the deaths of hundreds of Canadians annually.