For over three decades, CEI has advocated health care reforms that put more power in the hands of consumers to choose their health providers, treatment protocols, and scope of insurance coverage. We have advocated reform of the Food and Drug Administration’s drug and device approval process to allow for greater flexibility and patient choice. And in 2013, CEI organized the court challenges to Obamacare’s exchange subsidies that concluded with the Supreme Court’s King v. Burwell decision.
Healthcare Issue Areas
Featured Posts
News Release
FDA commissioner resignation opens opportunity for refocus on science over politics
After a somewhat tumultuous tenure, FDA commissioner Marty Makary is stepping down. While Dr. Makary made his mission to accelerate drug approval and bring a…
Blog
Don’t hinder biosimilar development
In its most recent legislative session, the Florida legislature considered precluding pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) from holding an investment interest in biosimilar manufacturing. That…
Blog
The unseen costs of banning PBM-owned pharmacies in Tennessee
Tennessee lawmakers recently passed the FAIR Rx Act, which would bar companies from owning pharmacies while also operating a pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) and…
Search Posts
Forbes
FTC Drug Meddling Would Needlessly Push Pharmaceutical Costs Higher
Four of every five pharmaceutical prescriptions today are filled with a generic drug. That sounds like a big number, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)…
Blog
Obamacare Harms Colleges And Their Employees
The University of Virginia is expecting a roughly $7-million bill for Obamacare's new employer penalties, said Susan Carkeek, the University's vice president and…
Blog
Lobbying Can Be A Great Investment
Not only did health insurers convince the government to require everyone in the country to buy their products, now their premiums will go up sharply,…
Blog
Washington Examiner: “Congress: Obamacare To Boost Premiums To $7,186 — A Year”
Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner reports on massive premium increases due to Obamacare: Health insurance companies, facing new and costly rules and…
Letters
21 Limited-Government Organizations Agree: House Should Repeal Dangerous IPAB
Full Document Available in PDF We, the undersigned organizations, representing millions of Americans who seek limited government and economic freedom, urge you…
Forbes
Doctor Shortage? Let Idled Postal Workers Fill In! (Satire)
Rejoice, one of Obamacare’s great mysteries has been solved: Namely, the question of how we are going to provide free medical care to 30 million…
Blog
Obamacare: More Cost, Less Coverage
Seven million fewer people than predicted will have health care coverage a decade after Obamacare’s passage, admits the Congressional Budget Office. One reason “is that…
Heartlander
GMO Labeling to Appear on Washington Ballot
Gregory Conko, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, says consumers have a right to know if products they purchase have negative health consequences.
Blog
Economic Freedom Declines Again; Government Control Is Bad For Your Health
Economic freedom has declined under the Obama administration, and America's rank has repeatedly fallen on the Index of Economic Freedom and other rankings issued…
Blog
Obamacare Increases Unnecessary Medical Tests, Wastes Doctors’ Time, Drives Up Billings And Costs
President Obama claimed Obamacare would cut healthcare costs, but it actually increased them in many ways, some of which are chronicled here. Here are yet…
Blog
Obamacare Imposes New Fees, Cost Increases On The Public
Obamacare was sold to the public based on the fallacy that it would cut healthcare costs, but each month brings additional evidence that it…
Cato
The Ripple Effects of Flawed Agbiotech Regulation
The modern techniques of genetic engineering—also known as biotechnology, recombinant DNA technology, or genetic modification (GM)—offer plant breeders the tools to make old crop plants…
Blog
Appeals Court Overturns Dismissal Of Challenge To Obamacare Contraception Mandate By Religious Colleges
According to law professor Jonathan Adler, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit effectively overturned a district court’s dismissal of a challenge…
Blog
PolitiFact Is The Liar Of The Year
PolitiFact falsely depicted Michael Cannon, the director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute, as suggesting that state law overrides federal law, erroneously…
Point of Law
Will lawmakers slip disparate impact, punitive damages into Title VI?
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination by recipients of federal education spending and other programs, does not currently allow…
Blog
More Lawsuits Against Doctors, Hospitals Due To Senate Amendment 3215 To NDAA
Earlier, I wrote about a proposed amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which would dramatically increase lawsuits against schools and…
News Release
Institute Welcomes Court Ruling on Commercial Free Speech
WASHINGTON, D.C., Dec. 4, 2012 – The Competitive Enterprise Institute applauded the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision yesterday, concluding that the…
Op-Eds
Senator Durbin is wrong on energy drinks ban
Several lawmakers have called on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “do something” to protect the public from the alleged threat of energy…
Hoover Institution
Free Speech for Big Pharma
One of the most important elements of medicine is also among the least well known: the ability of physicians to prescribe approved medicines for purposes…
Blog
Obamacare Will Increase Health Insurance Costs In California, Washington, D.C., And Elsewhere
California officials concede that their state’s Obamacare exchange will hike premiums for policyholders by up to 25 percent. In the District of Columbia, small…
Hoover Institution
A Lack of Government Transparency: The Devil In The Detailing
Cowritten by Jeff Stier. A House Appropriations subcommittee has voted to move forward legislation that would cut $1.3 billion from the Department of Health and…
Orange County Register
A Losing Proposition on Food Labeling
California's initiative process – which allows "propositions" to be placed on the ballot quite easily – can lead to laws that are muddled, intentionally misleading…
Forbes
“Genetically Engineered” In California: A Food Label We Don’t Need
From “food miles” to farmers’ markets, it seems that consumers have never been more interested in the ways their food is grown. That’s one motivation…
Forbes
A Conservative Case for Obamacare?
From Thomas P. Miller’s column in National Review: The response of roughly half of the Senate Republicans was to co-sponsor an alternative bill…
Forbes
Labeling Of Genetically Engineered Foods Is A Losing Proposition
As Joe Six-pack munches Fritos and popcorn during the opening games of the NFL season, does he care what variety of corn was used to…
Boston Herald
Mass. biotech reaps Monsanto deal
From Ira Kantor's article in The Boston Herald: Gregory Conko, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., and co-author of…
USA Today
FDA rules won’t do much good
Food-borne illnesses kill as many as 3,000 Americans each year, but consumers should not expect new Food and Drug Administration regulations to help. These rules,…
Real Clear Policy
More FDA Control Does Not Mean More Safety
News outlets are reporting that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cited an alarmingly high number of alleged safety and regulatory violations by…
Blog
FDA Delay Likely Killed Thousands, Imposed Billions In Costs
The FDA didn’t approve a home test for HIV until 24 years after it first received an application. According to an FDA advisory committee,…
Blog
Dietitian Licensing Board Attempts To Limit Free Speech, Silence Bloggers
Have you ever given someone advice on how to lose weight through dietary changes? Have you ever recommended that certain foods could be consumed or…
Real Clear Policy
The American Revolution Comes to a Pitiful Close
June 2012 – and especially its last week – was ripe with ominous metaphor, all revolving around the Supreme Court’s decision on June 28th to…
Blog
Court’s Obamacare Decision — What Would John Locke Say?
Richard Epstein of the Hoover Institution and the University of Chicago Law School gives the Chief Justice some tough love in “What Was Roberts…
Blog
The Good, the Bad, and the Broccoli
Most people thought that the health care decision would hinge on the Court’s interpretation of the Commerce Clause. That’s why I wrote the first three…
Blog
Obamacare Lives. So, Now What?
Former CEI scholar Tom Miller (now with AEI) has some thoughts on the Obamacare decision in today's…
Blog
CEI Podcast: June 28, 2012: The Obamacare Decision
General Counsel Sam Kazman shares his thoughts on the Supreme Court's health care decision, the Commerce Clause, Congress' taxation power, and more.
Blog
Supreme Court Concocts New “Rational (Tax) Basis” Test in Upholding Health Law
In a move that seems to have surprised many observers, the Supreme Court today upheld nearly all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act…
Blog
Obamacare Upheld, 5-to-4: A Perverse Decision That Undermines Political Accountability
Today, in a really perverse ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare's individual mandate as a tax in a 5-to-4 decision, even though Obamacare's supporters…
Blog
Quick Thoughts on the Health Care Ruling
The Supreme Court upheld the health care bill, as you've no doubt heard by now. Over at the Daily Caller, I offer a few quick…
Daily Caller
Three Quick Thoughts on the Health Care Ruling
The Supreme Court has upheld the health care law’s insurance mandate, to the surprise of many. This surprise sparked a few quick thoughts about the…
News Release
Supreme Court Concocts “Rational Tax Test” in Health Ruling
Washington, D.C., June 28, 2012 – Statement by CEI Senior Fellow Gregory Conko: In enacting the health care individual purchase mandate, Congress…
Real Clear Markets
Global Governments’ Growing Embrace of Big Pharma
As the pharmaceutical industry wrestles with multiple existential threats-from price controls to patent cliffs to dwindling pipelines-calls are growing for deeper government-industry cooperation. As private…
Bio-IT World
Does Thimerosal Prevent Autism? Epidemiology Gone Wild
Human beings are born pattern recognizers, part of the repertoire of survival skills that separates us from the beasts. We are programmed to spot relationships…
Blog
Supreme Court Issues 5-to-4 Rulings, But Not On Obamacare
The Supreme Court announced four decisions today, three of them decided by slender 5-to-4 margins, but not the long-awaited ruling about the constitutionality of…
Bio-IT World
Should We Label Genetically-Modified Food?
Green State TV is back for 2011 with an interview on biotechnology and agriculture with Greg Conko…
Washington Times
High Price of Cheap Drug Imports
With the Senate set to vote on one of the few “must-pass” bills of the year, pharmaceutical industry critics are plotting ways to add poison…
Blog
More First Amendment Violations from Obamacare, Thanks to HHS
Obamacare will drive up costs for most patients and insurance policyholders. Yet "health-insurance companies must tell customers who get a premium rebate…
Washington Times
ObamaCare’s Killer Device Tax
Much of the political conversation in Washington these days concerns innovation, job creation and competitiveness. But talk is cheap, and elected officials must enact policies…
Washington Times
The Off-Label Drug War of Words
If knowledge is power and ignorance is bliss, what is power used to prevent knowledge from eliminating ignorance? I don’t know; ask the FDA (U.S.
Heartlander
Critical Drug Shortages Reaching Crisis
From Ashley Bateman's article on Heartland.org: But according to Greg Conko, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, more mandates on companies…
Medical Progress Today
Mayo v. Prometheus and Diagnostic Patents: What Does the Supreme Court Decision Really Mean?
I finally had a chance to read the Supreme Court's recent decision in the Mayo v. Prometheus Labs case, which invalided two patents claiming methods…
