RealClearHealth Articles

Americans remain deeply concerned by the ongoing inflation pressures on their pocketbooks, including medical costs—which now beats out both rent and food as the public’s top budgetary worry. And yet high-ranking officials within the Trump Administration and members of his own party in Congress are pushing for policy changes that could accelerate the economic harm and exacerbate a large cost driver that has long wreaked havoc on affordability efforts: the trial lawyer lobby. America’s tort system currently imposes a staggering cost of $529 billion annually,...

Many cutting-edge medicines come with sky-high price tags, leaving patients struggling to afford them. Biosimilars were introduced to help fix this problem. Think of them as the “generic” versions of complex biological medicines. They provide the same life-saving benefits at a much lower cost. Just as generic drugs made everyday medications more affordable, biosimilars are now driving down the cost of complex therapies ranging from insulin to cancer treatments. That means more affordable access to essential medicines saving patients billions of dollars. However, there are still...

For too long, the American health care system has felt like a complex maze where the exit is blocked by layers of middlemen and opaque billing practices. As mothers, we are the primary healthcare CEOs of our households. We manage the appointments, track the symptoms, and strive to feed our families with nutritious, healthy food to ensure our children have what their need to thrive. We don’t expect the system to be perfect, but we do expect it to be honest. Fortunately the tide is starting to turn. With the recent enactment of long-awaited Pharmacy Benefit Manager (PBM)...

The U.S. decision to pullout from the World Health Organization earlier this year reflects more than a single dispute with a multilateral body. It fits a broader America First posture sceptical of blank-check internationalism, driven by Covid-era credibility failures, and sharpened by geopolitical strategy in a bipolar U.S.–China landscape. This realpolitik framing matters. With the closure of USAID, health diplomacy is now squarely under Marco Rubio’s State Department – the first person since Henry Kissinger (1973-1975) to serve simultaneously as Secretary of State and...

My interactions with Pat Furlong, mother of two Duchenne boys and Founding President and CEO of Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy (PPMD), are generally clinical. What are the newest trends in science? What are the promising pharmaceutical development programs? What’s going on at the FDA? These conversations are robust but Pat and PPMD are about more than that. Every time we speak, Pat reminds me her organization begins with the word “Parent.” Even though PPMD is a parent advocacy organization with a highly sophisticated understanding of what it takes to bring new therapies...

Washington State’s healthcare system has a problem lawmakers can no longer ignore. So-called nonprofit hospitals are behaving like aggressive, profit-maximizing corporations while enjoying enormous tax breaks intended for charities. The contradiction is becoming impossible to defend. Across the country, more than half of the nation’s roughly 5,000 hospitals operate as nonprofits. In theory, the arrangement reflects a social contract: hospitals receive lucrative tax exemptions—sometimes worth billions—in exchange for providing community benefits such as free or...

Law and science may occupy different spheres—one dealing with cases argued in courtrooms, the other with hypotheses tested in laboratories. Yet both disciplines rest on the same foundation: the pursuit of truth. Each requires evidence to be gathered systematically and presented in a uniform, transparent way. Both also depend on gatekeepers—judges in one system, peer reviewers in the other—to ensure that conclusions are supported by reliable facts rather than speculation. Right now, the Second Circuit in New York is deciding whether federal courts will continue to enforce...

The news that the Galleri blood test – which can detect DNA of more than 50 different types of cancer in the blood stream before symptoms otherwise appear – failed to show a 20% reduction in stage 3 and 4 cancer diagnoses among 140,000 Britons over 3 years, crushed the stock price of its parent company, Grail, Inc. It’s down about 50% since last week. This caught my eye because I have first-hand experience that the Galleri test works. I was one of the first people being served by a major research hospital system in Chicago to take the test – I took the test...

If there is one lesson Washington should take from the latest national health care survey, it is this: Americans are tired of a system that spends trillions of dollars every year yet still leaves them feeling powerless. A new nationwide survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies for Fund The Patient offers a stark picture of voter sentiment heading into the 2026 midterm elections. The numbers are not just a warning to policymakers. They are a roadmap for reform – and these policies line up directly with President Trump’s Great Healthcare Plan. The first takeaway is...

Washington spends a lot of time arguing about drug prices, but it often ignores the middlemen who sit at the center of the pharmaceutical marketplace. Pharmacy benefit managers—PBMs—have enormous influence over which medicines patients receive, what employers pay, and how rebates flow through the system. Yet for years they have operated with remarkably little transparency. A new proposal from the U.S. Department of Labor could begin to change that. The rule, developed through the department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, would require PBMs that work with...

Washington talks endlessly about strengthening America’s healthcare system. The real test is whether policymakers are willing to fix the weak links in the pharmaceutical supply chain that patients depend on every day. The Trump administration has made patient access a priority, issuing executive orders aimed at lowering costs and improving the reliability of drug supply. But if policymakers want to make the system more resilient, they should start with a simple fix: allow regulated pharmaceutical outsourcing facilities to do the job they were created to do. America’s...

When Congress passed the Right to Try Act during the first Trump administration, the goal was straightforward: give patients with serious or rare diseases a fair chance to access promising therapies when conventional options had been exhausted. The policy reflected a broader philosophy that speed, flexibility, and compassion should play a larger role in drug regulation — especially where the alternative for patients was simply waiting for a progressive decline. The philosophy of President Trump has not meaningfully changed. But the way some officials within the Food and Drug...

Like it or not, we live in what Margaret Thatcher liked to call the “Nannystate.” We expect the government to do much of our thinking for us, including the critical responsibility of keeping ourselves and our families safe and healthy. Given what’s happened at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the last few weeks, it's no wonder the American people have serious doubts about the safety of the vaccines available for everything from measles to flu. Before COVID, the worst we had to deal with were probably the claims of a fringe movement led by minor Hollywood...

The Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture just released the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, resetting the federal nutrition advice that shapes how Americans eat.That reset comes after decades of guidance that failed to keep pace with evolving science -- or with the scale of America's chronic disease crisis. As a physician, I have seen firsthand how federal recommendations emphasizing low-fat, carbohydrate-heavy diets coincided with skyrocketing rates of obesity and diet-related disease. The guidelines helped create an atmosphere where Americans became sicker,...

For decades, the American approach to pain management has been caught in a dangerous paradox: prescribing addictive opioids to treat injury, only to create a secondary crisis of addiction. While progress has been made, the human cost is nearly incomprehensible. However, with President Trump’s January 29 executive order establishing the "Great American Recovery Initiative", the nation is officially pivoting toward a more comprehensive, holistic, and non-addictive future in pain care. The innovation, technology, and political momentum needed to break the cycle have finally...

Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont just got caught with his hand in Uncle Sam’s cookie jar.  For eight months, he has offered various far-fetched explanations claiming that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and its prohibition on hospital tax rate increases, did not apply to Connecticut. Last summer, he jacked up Connecticut’s tax on hospitals almost 50%. The hospital tax is a shell game enabling states to obtain federal money simply by shifting money around: extracting taxes from hospitals, and, then, immediately returning most of it, with the return triggering matching federal...

Leaders inside the beltway are rightly eager for solutions to address America’s chronic disease crisis—and the healthcare costs that follow as a result. Chronic disease now accounts for roughly 90 percent of all healthcare spending. Diet-related illnesses like diabetes, hypertension, and obesity are shortening lives and straining every payer in the system, from Medicare and Medicaid to employer plans and family budgets. Fortunately, across the country, at the state, local, and private sector levels, a quiet revolution is already underway that treats food as...

In a federal system riddled with inefficiency, Medicare Advantage stands out as a rare success story protecting the wallet and improving the health of 35 million seniors and people with disabilities who rely on it. Congress created Medicare Advantage in 1997 to improve healthcare for seniors and control spending through market forces. Today more than half of America’s seniors rely on it. Public polling consistently shows satisfaction rates with Medicare Advantage hovering around 95 percent. That success story is now at risk. At the beginning of each year, the...

Across the country, parents, caregivers, teachers, and medical professionals share a growing concern: our kids are struggling. As a clinician, I see it first-hand every day. Families are battling a multitude of pressures and stressors, from a culture of over-programming to shortages of mental health resources, to a lack of outdoor play, to cycles of abuse and home instability, to navigating an increasingly digital world, and so much more. A challenge this nuanced requires a similarly nuanced look at solutions. Let’s start by looking at what the research shows.  Across the nation,...