RealClearHealth Articles
How Trump's Health Care Agenda Can Succeed Where Others Failed
Every president promises to fix health care -- but the system rarely seems to change for the better. Even when so-called reforms pass, prices remain unpredictable. Costs continue to rise. And navigating the system grows more frustrating by the year.If President Trump wants to succeed where others have failed, he'll need to target the gargantuan insurance companies that lie at the intersection of every other aspect of the healthcare system.Insurers -- not patients and their doctors -- are the ones that ultimately determine what treatments and procedures patients can receive, which providers...
Medicare Price Controls on Biologic Drugs Discourage Lower Cost Competition
On January 20, 2026, Health Insurance company CEOs were called before Congress to talk about the rising costs of healthcare, with a focus on the role of competition for lower prices. The CEOs noted that promoting the use of biosimilar medicines is an approach they are using to cut costs. This makes sense as biologic drugs are nearly half of U.S. spending on drugs. Billions in premiums and out-of-pocket costs can be saved with biosimilars. This underscores the importance of examining the Inflation Reduction Act and its impact on biosimilar drug development and competition.
The next...
High ACA Premiums Aren’t an Accident, It’s a Business Model for Insurers
Health care costs are crushing Americans, and Washington keeps pretending it’s a mystery. It isn’t. Obamacare didn’t just fail to give Americans access to care they could afford; it redesigned the system to guarantee insurance companies huge profits. And year after year, Democrats have doubled down on that design, protecting insurers while families pay more for less care.
Affordability is the number one problem in American health care. It’s a problem that crosses party lines. Last week, President Trump introduced The Great Healthcare Plan, designed to lower costs and...
Trump Is Putting Science and Safety First by Rescheduling Marijuana
When President Donald Trump recently issued an executive order to reschedule marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III under the Controlled Substances Act, he achieved what every other president before him could not: changing federal policy on the drug to reflect the scientific and medical reality.
For decades, marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning the government considers it to have “no currently accepted medical use” and “a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug under medical supervision.” That simply is not true for...
Hospital Pricing Has Become Highway Robbery for American Patients
A healthcare affordability crisis is among us. And while President Trump’s recent healthcare plan announcement appropriately targets high healthcare costs and the need for greater transparency, we can’t have a real conversation about affordability without confronting the biggest driver of those costs: hospitals.
In the last decade, employer coverage costs have increased by 47%, in part due to billing abuses, such as hidden fees charged by hospitals, which, in addition to cutting take-home pay for hard-working patients and limiting business growth for job creators,...
President Trump’s Updated Dietary Guidelines a Win for Americans
A recent announcement by the Trump Administration updating dietary guidelines for Americans is a win for the Administration and all Americans. Federal bureaucrats of the past had used these guidelines to promote irrational recommendations not based on science. The Make America Healthy (MAHA) movement took a step forward with the issuance of guidance for the years 2025-2030 that are logical.
The dietary announcement made headlines because of changes to the approach to alcohol consumption, yet the recommendations seem to be common sense recommendations that remove arbitrary...
Drug Discounts Should Benefit Patients, Not Hospitals
This past year has been a year of reckoning for American health care policy. Patients, doctors, and lawmakers were asking an important question: Where is our money going?
Indeed, the talk of Washington has been shifting in that direction: policymakers are finally asking how to return healthcare dollars that go into a subsidy vacuum directly to patients. President Trump has made multiple posts on that single topic. Senators Bill Cassidy and Rick Scott have released plans centered around it, and their counterparts in the House have introduced bills to put these policy ideas into...
Private Equity Hijacked a Patient Protection Law
President Trump did what Washington had failed to do for decades: he stood up for patients and put an end to one of the most abusive practices in American healthcare. Surprise medical billing, where families did everything right and still got crushed with massive, out-of-network bills, was a massive scam hiding in plain sight. The No Surprises Act was meant to shut it down, and under President Trump’s leadership, it did exactly that.
Patients are no longer being ambushed with potentially life-shattering bills after emergency care. That is a real achievement.
But passing strong,...
This Small Change to Drug Policy Will Make Pharma Bad Actors Cry
When it comes to American medicine, we are definitely in a Dickensian best of times, worst of times situation. On the one hand, Big Pharma has created wonder drugs that can perform miracles, like the weight loss drugs that have helped even Amy Schumer! On the other hand, so many of these miracles are out of reach for those of us who aren’t movie stars.
Take, for example, the bizarre, outrageous differences in drug prices between the U.S. and other countries have eroded what little trust the American public had for its healthcare system. It’s created a...
The Healthcare Costs Crisis Hiding in Plain Sight
On January 22, both the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the House Committee on Ways and Means will meet to discuss the rising costs of healthcare. The individuals who will be called to the carpet to explain themselves and their employers during these hearings all represent insurers.
While the jury is out on Wall Street as to the relative profitability of the insurance industry today, and millions of Americans have fewer choices today because insurers are exiting the market, President Trump is calling on Congress to rein in healthcare spending. The question is,...
Only Bad Actors Are Afraid of the SAFE Drugs Act—and That’s the Point
If the SAFE Drugs Act of 2025 makes you nervous, you should ask yourself why.
Earlier this year, the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest (CMPI) published a report warning that large-scale, copycat drug compounding—particularly involving high-demand medicines like GLP-1s—had drifted far from its lawful, patient-centric roots and into something far more dangerous: a loosely regulated shadow market operating at industrial scale, often with little regard for patient safety or FDA rules.
Representatives Rudy Yakym and André Carson’s SAFE Drugs Act of 2025 is a...
Owning 'Shared Decision Making'
RFK, Jr’s vaccine policy is healthcare noblesse oblige of the most craven, grievous and callous variety. It’s also an opportunity to advance vaccine acceptance. Really.
Fact: Americans overwhelmingly embrace vaccines for themselves and their children – and they vote with their arms. During the 2023 to 2024 school year, 92.7% of kindergartners received the MMR vaccine. This is lower than the 93.1% seen in the previous school year and the 95.2% seen in the 2019 to 2020 school year, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic – but it’s important for context. Americans believe...
Helping Solve the Riddle of Rare Disease Research
When Mikaela Naylon was diagnosed with osteosarcoma—a rare and aggressive form of bone cancer—her parents struggled to find hope in a maze of few options. Osteosarcoma is a challenging cancer to cure or treat, and despite major gains decades ago, survival rates have largely plateaued.
Mikaela understood this better than most and wanted to help others. Before she died at age 16, she became an advocate for pediatric research, asking a simple, devastating question: why were there so few therapies for children like her?
For families confronting rare pediatric cancers, this question...
Congress: Reform PBMs to Lower Drug Costs for Hard-Working Americans
Today, Americans are being forced to choose between their prescription medicines and financial wellbeing. Nearly 30% of Americans say they haven't taken their medication as prescribed due to unaffordable prices. This is especially impactful for Americans who take biologics, some of the most expensive drugs in the world, that treat many chronic diseases, like cancer, diabetes, arthritis, psoriasis, and more.
Fortunately, an immediate commonsense solution to this problem is available. One year ago, I urged Congress to pass comprehensive pharmacy benefit manager (PBM)...
To Help Patients, Congress Must Address Rising Insurance Costs
When it comes to rising health care costs, is Congress focused on the right problem? Insurance costs are skyrocketing as Washington focuses on a sector where prices have remained relatively flat: Prescription drugs.
This year, prescription drug prices are rising in line with overall medical inflation—about 4 percent.[1] Yet insurers raised premiums in Affordable Care Act (ACA) plans by 26 percent.[2] Deductibles in ACA Silver plans have skyrocketed 119 percent over the past decade.[3]
Confusion surrounding drug pricing is understandable. It’s one of the most...
Eliminating CMMI Is a Fiscally Responsible Reform Win for Republicans
If the government excels at anything, it's spending taxpayer money as if dollar bills grow on trees. Washington politicians fund one bad decision after another – not on their dime, but on yours – without thinking twice. And while this pattern has become all too familiar, federal bureaucrats still find ways to funnel billions of dollars into programs that offer zero benefit for Americans, including Medicare and Medicaid patients and providers.
One of the most glaring – and least understood – examples is the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS)...
Making America Healthy Again Starts With Real Food
The 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for America were published on January 7, 2026. They emphasize eating real foods and avoiding added sugars and represent an important departure from prior recommendations. The first Dietary Guidelines for America were published in 1980 and provided the direct instruction to “(a)void too much fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol,” a claim that subsequent recommendations would repeat. The demonization of fat as the culprit in heart disease – a claim that lacked high quality evidence – led to a proliferation of...
Insurance Middlemen Are a Nightmare for My Sleep Patients
Nearly every day, exhausted patients walk into my office desperate for relief from sleep apnea. The condition, which causes people to stop breathing in their sleep, is surprisingly common and can be life-threatening. Thankfully, it's also manageable with the right equipment.
In fact, the hardest part of providing care and solutions for my patients suffering from sleep apnea isn't the condition itself. It's fighting the insurance middlemen who routinely delay and deny the equipment hundreds of my patients need to stay alive.
One of the worst offenders is Synapse Health, a company tapped by...
America's Biotech Leadership Depends on the States
For decades, America has led the global biotech industry – thanks, in part, to state-level policies that encourage research and manufacturing investments.But other countries, including China, are sparing no expense in the bid to overtake us. Beijing has officially made biotechnology a national strategic priority and is pouring billions into state-backed research and manufacturing efforts.All states should consider impactful biotech policies that grow and strengthen our domestic biotechnology industry. If states fail to utilize and replicate what...
Why the Drug Pricing System Is Broken
I almost got fired in 1995 for bypassing a pharmaceutical approval process that took three months to answer patient questions. My crime? Putting patients before bureaucracy. I don’t recommend any employee bypass the process; I recommend working to improve it.
Thirty years later, after building a billion-dollar healthcare company, I’m still fighting the same battle – except now the challenge isn’t just red tape. It’s a pricing system so fundamentally broken that everyone benefits except for those it’s supposed to serve.
Let me be direct: I’ve had...
