Rethinking Maryland's Health Care Future

By Greg Scandlen
Published on Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Consumers, employers, insurers, physicians, and policymakers in Maryland and nationwide face extraordinary challenges in bringing affordable health care to the American people. In the past two decades, there has been a revolution in medical technology and pharmacology, but costs have risen as our methods of delivering services remain mired in the past. Traditional means of financing—public programs like Medicaid and private programs like employer-sponsored health insurance—no longer seem up to the task. Employers face a competitive environment that impedes their ability to rais prices enough to cover growing health care costs, and state governments are caught in a dilemma of how to deliver on excessive promises in a time of shrinking revenue.

Medical Malpractice: Is it Time for Tort Reform in Maryland?

By Michael Krauss
Published on Wednesday, January 14, 2004
“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” When the late Sen. Everett M. Dirksen from Illinois offered that famous quip about government spending 40 years ago, no one imagined that the same words might be used today to describe the American tort system. Yet last year a Florida jury conjured up punitive damages of $145 billion for a class of plaintiffs. The year before, a California jury recommended a $28 billion verdict for a single claimant. And in 1998, four major cigarette companies agreed to the mother of all awards: a quartertrillion- dollar settlement supposedly to reimburse states for the Medicaid costs of smoking-related illnesses.

Drug Import Bill Bad for America’s Health

Originally Published in The Cumberland Times-News

By Christopher B. Summers
Published on Saturday, August 30, 2003
Congressional lawmakers will soon vote on legislation to allow Americans to purchase prescription drugs from pharmacies in Canada and other countries where prices are much lower. This “re-importation” seems like a good idea, especially for seniors who are anxious to lower their prescription drug bills. But the legislation raises two important questions that lawmakers need to address: How can the safety of re-imported drugs be assured, and how can the U.S. bring lower drug prices to its own pharmacies?

Time to End Maryland's War on Prescription Drugs

Originally Published in The Daily Record

By Christopher B. Summers
Published on Saturday, May 04, 2002
The 2002 Maryland General Assembly recently considered legislation to lower prescription drug costs by forcing drug manufacturers to pay supplemental rebates for inclusion of their drugs in Maryland's Medicaid formulary. The law's defeat was a blessing because its implementation would have been a curse. Instead of lowering drug prices for the neediest state residents, the price controls imposed by such a law would have put Maryland's hemorrhaging state Medicaid program in intensive care and on indefinite life support.

Issues Guide: Health Care

From Maryland 2002-2003: A Guide to the Issues

By Dwight K. Bartlett III
Published on Tuesday, January 15, 2002
With the level of uninsured and underinsured Marylanders already a problem and health care inflation poised to accelerate, the state must enable better provision of medical care.