What if regulations prevented your doctor from prescribing you the correct course of treatment for your illness?  That is exactly what will be happening, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) moves ahead to implement a seriously flawed medical device auction program.  That program, if not fixed, will reduce patient access to prescribed medical [...]

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PDF VERSION IS AVAILABLE HERE — PCPAN_Letter_ACI to FTC   January 11, 2012 Chairman Jon Leibowitz Federal Trade Commission 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20580   Dear Chairman Leibowitz: The American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research is strongly opposed to the proposed merger between pharmacy benefit managers (PBM) Express Scripts, Inc. and Medco [...]

The Solution Can Sometimes Be Worse than the Problem (Published in THE HILL’s Congressional Blog on January 6, 2012 as “FTC should block proposed Express Scripts-Medco merger”  The perfect example of the law of unintended consequences can be found in the 7 million acres from Texas to Washington DC that is covered by Kudzu vines.  [...]

You may never have heard of them before, but Express Scripts, Inc. (ESI) and Medco are two of the most important companies in the United States.  These two corporations are pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), businesses that act as middlemen between the pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies (as well as between drug companies and sponsors of prescription [...]

Brent Wilkes, Executive Director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, spoke at ACI’s Capitol Hill sponsored event.  Other speakers included Peter Cramton (University of Maryland Economics Professor) and Steve Grist (Assistant Attorney General of Virginia).

Congress has an urgent need to control Federal Deficit.  Earlier this year, the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform identified the containment of government medical program costs as a major priority to controlling the Federal spending.  With the aging US population, the need to address ways to control medical costs is more important than [...]

The US GDP is growing too slowly to create enough jobs to tame 9.1 percent unemployment.  New business formations have traditionally been a major source of job creation, but since 2007 formations have been 20% below normal or 1.8 million jobs short of normal pace.  McKinsey estimates 21 million jobs need to be created by [...]

What if regulations prevented your doctor from prescribing you the correct course of treatment for your illness? That is exactly what will be happening, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) moves ahead to implement a seriously flawed medical device auction program. That program, if not fixed, would reduce patient access to prescribed medical [...]

Creating Jobs is the Real Challenge We are mired in a slow growth economy and hobbled by political inflexibility while 22 million American consumers look for a job.  Demand is slack and the Administration sprinkles regulatory “agent-orange” across markets where the private sector would normally invest in equipment and jobs.  Large and small firms are [...]