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
Blog
State Directed Payments redistribute money across states and supercharged growth
Differences in states’ use of SDPs cause an interstate redistribution of taxes as well. Because states are setting different levels of SDPs, spending varies…
Blog
How State Directed Payments turned Medicaid into an interstate transfer scheme
Medicaid’s financing rules have long allowed states to expand spending while shifting much of the cost to federal taxpayers. One of the most important…
Blog
Medicaid financing gimmickry – before and after the One Big Beautiful Bill
Medicaid was created in 1965 as a joint federal-state health insurance program for low-income individuals which targeted families with dependent children, the elderly, and…
Search Posts
Blog
FDA Shows Its Bias against E-cigarettes as Deadline Approaches
After years facing the constant threat of extinction, it seemed the vapor industry would finally be vindicated. The evidence on e-cigarettes regarding their safety and…
National Review
DeSantis vs. Dr. Fauci
The latest skirmish in the blue media vs. red state wars started when Florida governor Ron DeSantis had the temerity to suggest that vaccination…
City Journal
Booster Overkill
Several weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed its guidance and recommended that fully vaccinated individuals wear a mask…
New York Post
Biden’s Losing Support for His COVID Handling. Maybe He Should Stop Politicizing it
President Biden is threatening legal action by the secretary of education against Republican governors to get them to OK school mask mandates. This follows…
News Release
Supreme Court Strikes Down CDC Eviction Moratorium, Upholds Rule of Law
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the nationwide eviction moratorium imposed by the Centers for Disease Control, which was ostensibly aimed…
City Journal
Science Matters—and So Do Individual Rights
As battles over Covid-19 mandates roil the country, it is vital that policies be scientifically based. Well-established legal precedent gives state governments and private…
Real Clear Policy
Sacrificing Truth and Science to Vilify Juul
Two prominent U.S. Senators want Juul to be punished for paying a scientific journal to “rig the science,” as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) put…
New York Post
Lockdowns and Mandates Impede Far Better Voluntary Safety Measures
After a year of start-and-stop public-health measures, more often guided by intuition than by science, studies are confirming what economists long suspected: The COVID-19…
City Journal
Individual Choices, Not Lockdowns
After a year of start-and-stop public-health measures, more often guided by intuition than by science, studies are confirming what economists long suspected: the Covid-19…
Blog
For CDC to Repair Its Reputation, It Must Get Out of Housing (and Politics)
The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was once considered one of the most trusted public health institutions in the world, but its…
National Review
Evicting the Constitution
Few government actions have been more emblematic of bureaucratic overreach than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s nationwide eviction moratorium. After multiple successful…
New York Post
Hasty About-Face Distorts Delta Force
The CDC now urges public indoor masking after a worrisome study on the Delta variant — undermining the vaccine effort. We finally know what…
City Journal
The CDC’s Slender Reed
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reversed its guidance from two months ago and now recommends that fully vaccinated…
Blog
Tobacco Control’s Latest Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
If you want to make something irresistible to teenagers, portray it as a forbidden fruit. That is what has happened in the U.S. with…
National Review
The True Meaning of ‘Misinformation’
Last week Senators Amy Klobuchar (D., Minn.) and Ben Ray Luján (D., N.M.) introduced a bill designed to suppress dangerous misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines. Like…
National Review
A Defeat for Dr. Leviathan
A recent ruling by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a seemingly obscure case has important implications for limits on the Food and Drug…
The New York Post
Doctor Says: Stop the Panic Over the Delta Variant
Delta is now the dominant variant in the US of the virus that causes COVID-19. It is more transmissible than earlier variants and has led…
The Tribune-Democrat
The Show Must Go On
COVID-19 cases are rising, vaccinations are low, and most of the host country wants to cancel the event. Yet, the Games should go on.
City Journal
Stay the Course
One cannot open a newspaper, turn on a TV, or scroll through an online news feed without hearing about Covid-19’s new Delta variant. While…
Wall Street Journal
Stealing From Drug Makers Is No Way to Vaccinate the World
The innovative pharmaceutical industry confounded critics by delivering highly effective vaccines for a novel disease in less than a year. The vaccines are working…
The Manila Bulletin
Groups Reveal Report on Bloomberg’s Meddling in PH
The Manila Bulletin cites Senior Fellow Michelle Minton on Bloomberg’s anti-tobacco meddling: The Nicotine Consumers Union of the Philippines (NCUP) and…
The New York Post
Stop panicking about ‘Delta’: Vaccines are effective against ALL strains of COVID
Delta is coming. But contrary to alarmists at home and abroad, there is little reason to panic. Scientists first identified the Delta variant…
Blog
End Useless Vaccination of the Immune
Six months ago, as the first vaccines were becoming available, I wrote, “Why Are We Vaccinating People Who Have Recovered From COVID-19?” Now…
Real Clear Policy
Risk, Trust, and COVID
When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced last month that vaccinated people need not wear masks regularly, Americans’ reaction was polarized. Many…
City Journal
Obamacare Survives a Third (and Likely Final) Challenge
The Supreme Court has now ruled on three legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act, and for opponents of the statute the third time…
Blog
Exposed: Bloomberg’s Anti-Tobacco Meddling in Developing Countries
Back in February I wrote a piece for Inside Sources titled “Bloomberg’s Philanthro-Colonialism: A Threat to Global Health and Science,” criticizing the behavior…
Blog
It’s up to Drug Reformers to Stop the War on Nicotine
In recent years, a growing number of Americans have been waking up to the failure of the War on Drugs. Officially initiated by…
National Review
Woke Inquisitors in the Medical World
Four hundred years ago, Italian astronomer Galileo was persecuted for advancing Copernicus’s theory that the earth and other planets rotate around the…
The Wall Street Journal
Vaccine Slowdown Isn’t Cause for Alarm
The United States has done something amazing: developed and authorized three new vaccines and vaccinated half of its adult population, all within 17 months…
Letters
CEI Joins Coalition Letter Opposing H.R. 3, the Lower Drug Costs Now Act
View Full Document as PDF Dear Member of Congress: We urge you to reject efforts to pass H.R. 3, the…
Wall Street Journal
Vaccine Slowdown Isn’t Cause for Alarm
The United States has done something amazing: developed and authorized three new vaccines and vaccinated half of its adult population, all within 17 months…
City Journal
Following the Politics, Not the Science
It is a disturbing prospect, like something out of a science fiction novel, but it’s appearing increasingly plausible nonetheless: the cause of the worldwide…
Letters
CEI Joins Coalition Letter Rejecting Drug Price Control Legislation
Dear Leader Schumer, Speaker Pelosi, Republican Leader McConnell, andMinority Leader McCarthy,We represent fiscal conservatives, free market advocates, and ordinaryAmericans concerned about confiscatory taxes on…
Blog
The CDC Finally Does the Obvious
Calling Captain Obvious. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has now stated what has been clear to anyone following the scientific literature…
National Review
Punishing Success: the Biden Administration, Vaccines, and Intellectual Property
The Biden administration has apparently learned the wrong lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic. In a recent statement, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the “Biden-Harris…
The Center Square
Wyoming Becomes Latest State To Ban Vaccine Passports
The Center Square cites CEI’s study by Joel Zinberg: A recent study by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank, argued…
City Journal
Dear Landlord
Among the least logical, most burdensome restrictions during the Covid-19 pandemic has been the nationwide ban on residential evictions imposed by the Centers for…
News One
All Cigarettes Matter: Why Ban Just Menthols? Statistics Show 77% Of Black Smokers Prefer Them
News One cites Senior Fellow Michelle Minton on menthol cigarettes: “The issue of tobacco control is no different, Michelle Minton recently wrote for…
Letters
CEI and Other Organizations Sign Coalition Letter Condemning Menthol Prohibition Proposal
We, the undersigned organizations, representing millions of taxpayers and consumers across the united States, strongly urge you to reject any proposed ban on menthol…
City Journal
Safety Cannot Be the Only Goal
It’s been a week since the FDA and CDC lifted their pause on the use of Johnson & Johnson’s Covid-19 vaccine. The…
News Release
FDA Menthol Ban Will Spur Illicit Market, Worsen Racial Disparities in Criminal Justice
The FDA today announced it will be banning menthol-flavored cigarettes and all flavors of cigars, with a proposal due out in the months…
The Washington Post
FDA Promises to Move to Ban Menthol in Cigarettes, Flavored Cigars Within a Year
The Washington Post cites Senior Fellow Michelle Minton on menthol cigarettes: The Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian think tank, warned that…
Blog
CDC Says It Is Safe for Vaccinated People to Unmask Outdoors
After much anticipation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has finally relaxed its guidelines on mask wearing—people who have been vaccinated…
Blog
A Menthol Cigarette Ban Would Perpetuate the Racist War on Drugs
In April the White House announced an apparently historic shift in the U.S. War on Drugs—away from strict prohibition to an approach emphasizing…
Blog
Democrats’ Drug Price Control Bill Is a Prescription for Disaster
Last Thursday, House Democrats reintroduced a bill from the last Congress, which they claim will protect Medicare from excessive prescription drug prices. Sadly,…
C-SPAN
VIDEO: CEI’s Joel Zinberg joins C-SPAN to Discuss Vaccine Passports and Mandates
Senior Fellow Joel Zinberg joined C-SPAN to discuss the debate over COVID-19 vaccine passports and the role of government and the private sector:…
New York Post
The Feds’ Foolish J&J Vax Pause is Already Undermining the War on COVID
A little more than a week ago, federal officials called for a pause in the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine. The decision…
News Release
House-passed SAFE Banking Act Would End Federal Threat to Banks Dealing with Legal Cannabis Businesses
The House has passed a bill allowing banks to do business with cannabis companies, the SAFE Banking Act. While Senate action on the…
The Washington Examiner
Racially Charged Atmosphere Could Spell End Of Menthol Cigarettes
The Washington Examiner cites Senior Fellow Michelle Minton on menthol cigarettes: Michelle Minton, a senior fellow at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise…
National Review
The CDC Shouldn’t Treat Racism as a Public-Health Crisis
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was founded in 1946 as the Communicable Disease Center, with a simple goal: prevent the spread of…